Author: Laurence Dahners
Date: 2013-08-30T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Thriller
Description: “Allotropes" is the eighth in a series of near future SciFi/Thrillers whose young heroine Ell Donsaii has a nerve mutation which has made her a genius as well as an athletic phenomenon. In “Allotropes,” she finds even more uses for the quantum entangled wormholes that she discovered. These wormholes aren’t big enough to send people through, yet they make possible technologies that create huge changes in our world. She installs some ports in her own body that she is able to use as weapons, delivering darts and drugs to stop her adversaries. Having earned gold medals in gymnastics in previous Ol
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Allotropes

An Ell Donsaii story # 8

By

Laurence E Dahners

Copyright 2013 Laurence E Dahners

Kindle Edition

Author’s Note

Though this book can “stand alone” it will be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including

“Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story)”

“Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2)”

“Lieutenant (an Ell Donsaii story #3)”

“Rocket (an Ell Donsaii story #4)”

“Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5)”

“Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6)” and

“Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7)”

I have minimized repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books in order to provide a better reading experience for those of you who are reading the series.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

Preprologue

Allan Donsaii was an unusually gifted quarterback. He was widely recognized to be startling strong and a phenomenally accurate passer. During his college career he finished two full seasons without any interceptions and two games with 100 percent completions. Unfortunately, he wasn’t drafted because the pro teams felt he was too small.

Kristen Taylor captained her college soccer team and was extraordinarily quick. She rarely played a game without a “steal” and usually had many.

Allan and Kristen dated more and more seriously throughout college and married at the end of their senior year. Their friends teased them that they were only marrying so that they could start their own sports dynasty.

Their daughter Ell had Kristen’s quickness, magnified by Allan’s strength and accuracy. The child also had a new mutation affecting the myelin sheaths surrounding her nerves. This mutation produced nerve transmission speeds that were nearly double those of normal neurons. Nerve impulse transmissions being faster, she had much quicker reflexes. Yet the new myelin sheath was also thinner, allowing more axons, and therefore more neurons, to be packed into the same sized skull. These two factors resulted in a brain which had more neurons, though it wasn’t larger and a more rapid processing speed, akin to a computer with a smaller scale CPU architecture that enables faster processor speeds.

Most importantly, under the influence of adrenalin in a “fight or flight” situation, her nerves would transmit even more rapidly than their normally phenomenal speed.

Much more rapidly…

Prologue

New York—PROOF WE ARE NOT ALONE! Today the journal Science announced the publication of a trio of papers regarding the third planet of the star Tau Ceti. The low key release belied the astonishing content of the material presented. The first paper describes the planet and its solar system. The second paper covers the biosphere and the intelligent though primitive inhabitants. The third paper outlines the early efforts to translate the language of the “Teecees,” as the inhabitants have been called. Though the scientific world has reacted to this announcement with shock and disbelief, the editors of the journal describe the evidence as “incontrovertible.” It is unlikely that many will be surprised that this technological feat was accomplished through the fifth dimensional ports described by Ell Donsaii, nor that she is a co-author on all three papers. While it is far too early to judge the impact this announcement will have on our world, several religious groups have already…

Shan rolled up onto his side, propping his head on his hand to look down at Ell. “How are you wanting to do this wedding? Are we just going to go to a justice of the peace?”

Ell’s eyes flashed wide. “You have got to be kidding!” She dramatically placed a hand on her heart, “I am a girl you know! Like almost every other girl in the world I’ve been dreaming since age four about my amazing, gorgeous, fantastic wedding!” She snorted, “Justice of the peace! Just when I’d been thinking you were different from all those other unromantic slobs.”

Grinning, Shan drew his head back, putting a hand up to deflect her ire. “Wait a minute! Wait just a minute. I’m only trying to understand. If I’m marrying ‘Raquel,’ who are you going to have as bridesmaids? What about a ‘mother of the bride’ and someone to give you away?”

Ell gave him one of her trademark crooked smiles and waved the backs of her fingers at him in a brushing away motion, “Tsk, details, mere details. Wedding plans are not something for the groom to concern his pretty head over you know. Your job is just to show up on time, look stunningly handsome and,” she pointed a finger, “do as you’re told.” Her expression faded to chagrin, “I wouldn’t want to admit that you have some good points there, however I will admit that I shall have to give this just a wee bit more thought.”

***

Shan looked up at the bank’s loan officer, “So you’re saying we don’t qualify for this loan. Even with both of our salaries? You are looking at my new salary from UNC aren’t you?”

“Yes Mr. Kinrais, but we’re also looking at the unpaid debts from your education. And, despite Ms. Blandon’s relatively good salary, especially for someone who didn’t finish college, it isn’t quite enough to qualify you for this particular house. Perhaps a little bit smaller house? Or if you could scrape together a little larger down payment?”

Ell sighed, “My grandmother gave me access to her account in case we needed a bigger down payment. Would $10,000 be enough?”

The loan officer spoke quietly to her AI (Artificial Intelligence) then looked down at her screen. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid you’d need a minimum of $14,000 more for us to clear you. Even then my advice would be to look for a smaller house. Financial modeling says that stretching your salaries to a mortgage this big will significantly stress you.” She raised her eyebrows, “I assume you’re getting married?” At their nod she said sympathetically, “Money problems are a common cause for the failure of young marriages. Don’t make things too tight for yourselves.”

Ell and Shan looked at one another. She tried to look concerned but winked with the eye away from the loan officer. Turning back she said, “I’m sure we’ll be OK. Figure the loan as if we’ve upped the down payment by $15,000 and we’ll borrow it from my grandmother.”

“OK,” the lady said dubiously.

As they walked out Shan said worriedly, “What kind of interest is your grandmother going to want on her loan?”

Ell squeezed his hand, “I have enough money in my account. We aren’t really getting it from Grams.”

Shan frowned and looked at her quizzically, “So, if you’ve got the money, why the song and dance then?”

“Because,” she gave him her crooked grin, “my Raquel persona shouldn’t have that kind of money in the bank.”

As they got in his car Shan wondered what the state of Ell’s finances actually were. As CEO of D5R he’d imagined that the board paid her a pretty good salary. But D5R was a startup and a lot of its promising technology might lay in the pipeline, without significant quantities in production. He suddenly realized that, compared to whatever the initial investment had been, the company might not be bringing in all that much revenue as of yet. She loved the stuff they were doing out there at D5R so much that she might have signed on for a much lower salary than a more experienced CEO would have demanded. He considered it a moment, thinking that she really shouldn’t even be the CEO. After all she didn’t have the experience or the training in financials. At most she should be the Chief Technology Officer. That would be much more reasonable than CEO because, after all, much of D5Rs tech did depend on her special math.

And Ell must have some large expenses. For instance, that little farm she lived on. Even if her roommate Bridget paid part of it, rent on that farm had to be pretty pricey. And she had a security team following her around. Who paid for them? And that woman Amy who seemed to assist with her life away from work. Did the company pay for Amy too? Or did she have to come out of Ell’s salary? And now she was buying another house?

Shan was in love but knew that the banker was right, marriages often foundered on financial shoals. He wondered how best to approach Ell about the issue. Could he be stepping into a boat with a huge hole in its bottom? He turned to Ell, “Remind me why we have to get this house now?”

Ell looked at him and shrugged. “We need a house near my farm to support my dual lifestyle. This one’s for sale right now and we don’t want to let someone buy it out from under us.”

***

Vanessa stepped into USA Gymnastics head coach Natya Kolmenya’s office. “Have you seen the December video of Ell Donsaii ‘dancing’ at a gymnastics exhibition for little kids in Morehead City North Carolina?!”

Natya nodded.

“Well!?”

“I suppose you’re excited because she can still do some of those floor elements that no one else can do?”

“Yes! We have got to recruit her to our team for this summer’s Olympics!”

“And I told you a few years ago that she’s not interested. I also told you that if you wanted her on the team you should ask her if she’d be willing to just show up and perform.”

“You really don’t think she’d be willing to practice with the team?”

Natya shook her head slowly. “You can ask, but I’ll bet you a hundred bucks the answer will be ‘no.’” She shrugged, “On the other hand, if you can get her to agree to just show up and perform, I’ll give her a spot on the team without a tryout. I’ve watched that vid at least fifty times, just trying to figure out how she does what she does. That’s enough of a tryout for me.”

“And why am I calling her, instead of you?”

Natya snorted, “Her AI refuses my calls. I called her so many times before the last Olympics that I’m persona non grata. I’m hoping you might at least get to talk to her.”

“Okaay,” Vanessa said musingly. She wandered back out to the gym pondering how best to go about this strange mission.

***

“So, it’s done?” Ell asked.

“Yes Ma’am.” The small man said.

Ell had been surprised when they’d hired Joe Spall, a retired miner, to build her tunnels. She’d had a stereotype in her head that the man would be a dwarf. The man wasn’t a dwarf by any means but he was burly and only about five foot three. Taciturn too.

Spall had worked small underground mines by himself for most of his life. Though it would be easy to think he’d be an out of touch hermit, in actuality he used an impressive array of modern tunneling equipment with tremendous proficiency. He’d bored Ell’s tunnels in very short order, saying that he’d never dug though anything so soft before.

Ell grinned at him, “Are we ready to go on a tour then?”

He shrugged and wordlessly got up, leading the way down the stairs into her basement. Punching a catch, he pivoted a set of shelves full of electronic equipment out of the way. They stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind them. As the door switch closed and the sensors noted that someone stood in the tunnel, the lights came on. A relatively well lit tunnel stretched away to the southwest of the house. The fiber-reinforced shotcrete walls were fairly smooth and painted white. They got in a golf cart that stood ready in a small recess.

Ell drove. The golf cart shot down the tunnel like it had taken steroids. She slowed as they came to a widened area. A recess on one side held another golf cart. On the other side of the tunnel stood a vertical shaft with a ladder up the side where Ell stopped. They got out and Ell climbed the ladder. At the dimly lit top she peered out through a fisheye lens. She saw nothing but darkness. Snapping another catch she pushed open the door. It had shelves mounted on the other side like the one back in Ell’s farm house.  Ell stepped sideways off the ladder and out into the little shack. The shack had been built over a “basement.” Once the shack was constructed, Spall had opened up the basement walls and used the opening to work the tunnel, taking dirt out the shack’s garage door. Now the shack, standing over that first shaft, served to hold the mowers and other grounds maintenance equipment for Ell’s little farm. The grounds keeper had no idea that his shack even stood over a “basement,” much less over a tunnel that served as a clandestine passage that could also act as an escape route.

Climbing back down from the shack into the tunnel, they drove down a split in the tunnel to one of the houses where some of Ell’s security team lived. A different split in the tunnels led to the other house where the remainder of her security people lived. A third split would take her to her assistant Amy Reston’s house. Finally the center tunnel took her to the house that she and Shan were in the process of buying. She went down that tunnel and parked next to another of the golf carts. Exiting the cart they got out and Ell patted the outer surface of the concrete blocks of the basement of that house. “You’re confident that when we cut the door it will enter the basement right next to the bottom of the basement stairs?”

“Yes Ma’am. As long as the stairs are actually where they showed them on the blueprints for the house.”

“They are; I’ve toured the house.” Ell said, getting back in the cart. “And you understand the deal on secrecy? We’ll pay you $5,000 per year for twenty years if this remains a secret. If secrecy is lost, even through no action of your own, we’ll only pay $2,500 per year. If we determine you’re responsible for the loss of secrecy, then you get nothing at all.”

“Yes Ma’am. No one will learn about these passages from me.”

“Great. Thanks for a job well done!”

***

Amy Reston looked up when Ell came in. “Hey Bosslady. I used the tunnels to get to your place. They’re pretty nice. I was expecting dark and rough from a miner.”

“Yeah, I thought he did a very nice job. You sent him his money?”

“Yep. It also looks like 301 Brostridge, the closer of the two security houses, needs a new roof.”

Ell waved a hand, “Minor details, Ms. Reston, minor details. I’ve got an important new job for you to take on.”

Amy raised her eyebrows, “What’s that?”

“I find myself in dire need of a wedding planner.”

Amy shot to her feet, “Shan? That guy Bridget’s been oohing and aahing about?”

“The same,” Ell grinned broadly.

Amy threw her arms around Ell. “I can’t wait to meet this godlike being that thawed the ice queen!”

“Ice queen!?” Ell drew her head back to glare, “Just because a girl waits for Mr. Right, she gets labeled cold?”

Amy, gave Ell another squeeze, then let go and frowned, “But I don’t know much about wedding planning!”

“You have time to read up on it. I’ve got to have someone planning this affair who’s already aware of my split personalities.”

“How long do I have?”

“Um, I don’t know. Late May?”

***

The small rocket squirted its attitude jets a couple of times as the rim of the enormous ring approached. The jets pivoted it so its main engine would push it in over the wall of the ring. The main engine exhausted hydrogen at full thrust for a minute, then turned and thrust the opposite direction to bring the rocket to a halt over the top of the sidewall.

As the sidewall rose to meet it, the main nozzle turned downward and opened up, gently bringing the rocket down to a landing on the upper surface of the wall. It stood there motionless for a minute, then a circular area on the large, odd fin sticking off to its side went fuzzy. A rolled up metallic tube slid through the port, dropped onto the sidewall and also stood motionless for a moment.

The band that had been holding the tube in its rolled up condition snapped open. The tube unrolled, revealing a much larger circle printed on its surface. That circle also vanished and an object three feet long with a maximum width of seven inches extruded through the 20 centimeter circle.

The object lay motionless for a few moments, then sat up, revealing an anthropomorphic form with two legs, two arms and a head. It picked up the sheet of nitinol on which its port to the ringworld had been printed and tossed it off the edge into the endless black of space, flung away by the rotation of the ring. The band that had wrapped the nitinol sheet into a tube went off the edge next.

The waldo stood and walked to the edge of the ring’s sidewall. There it stood a while, looking out over the enormous expanse of apparently flat, open land that faded into the misty distance ahead. It turned to take in the distant, upwardly curving shape of the ring on either side.

The PGR chip inside it sent back data:

“Apparent gravity 0.338G”

“Apparent atmosphere inside ring, Oxygen 28%, Nitrogen 71%, Others <1%”

The waldo knelt and fired a laser at the material near its feet. It did this for about thirty minutes with minimal apparent effect, intermittently tugging on the material. Finally a small piece of the material broke off. The waldo inspected it for a moment and dropped it into a port on its chest. After looking out over the vista ahead another minute, Sigwald—Ell’s name for this waldo on the Sigma Draconis ringworld—lifted on a jet of highly compressed air and floated out over the incredibly deep valley ahead.

Ell watched on her HUD (Heads Up Display) as her view through the waldo’s eyes dropped down along the rimwall that held in the ringworld’s atmosphere. The rimwall was hundreds of kilometers high, making for a tremendous drop down onto the floor of the interior of the ring. After a moment she said, “Allan, go ahead and correct for the Coriolis drift we’re getting out of the ring rotation and move us forward to keep us off the wall.” The rimwall curved steeply up from the ring rather than standing straight up. This meant that the waldo had to move forward or it would simply come down on the ring’s wall a little farther in.

Ell watched a little longer. Satisfied that the course Allan had the waldo on would take it down to the bottom of the rimwall and out to the enormous, apparently flat expanses beyond, she said, “Let me know when you get down to the plains.”

A little later, back up on the rimwall, the rocket that had delivered the waldo lifted slightly on a jet of hydrogen. It scooted to the edge, paused a second, then dropped off the outside of the wall, hurled away into space by the rotational force of the ringworld. At that point the rocket became inert, merely a small metallic object travelling through space at the nearly 21,000 miles per hour that the rotation of the ring had flung it.

It, however, had dropped off the edge with precise timing so that that “fling” would send it on a ballistic path to pass near the presumed origination world of the ring builders. At that speed the trip would take about 211 earth days.

Chapter One

San Francisco—For the first time in history, the most heavily viewed videos online were uploaded by a scientific journal. This phenomenon has been driven by the immense popularity of the clips showing the “Teecees” going about their daily lives on the third planet of Tau Ceti…

Querlak awakened about the same time as the rest of her clade, occasional pings on her connections sparking consciousness. For a brief beautiful moment she connected to both daughters, her mother, father, grandmother, both grandfathers, two ggms, three ggfs, and one gggf. The processing power afforded by the neural connections through their fifth dimensional quantum connections raised their consciousness and briefly produced a sweet TS (Transcendental State). Today’s TS was centered on Querlak. It felt sublime to have the TS centered on her rather than someone else. Everyone in this morning’s TS was her direct ancestor or descendant. Almost every morning, shortly after waking, Querlak participated in an awakening TS, but usually someone else was the focus or center. Querlak would most often be connected through one of her ancestors to that ancestor’s descendants—Querlak’s cousins—with that ancestor as the focus. It was always pleasurable just to be in the morning TS, but to have the waking period’s transcendentally heightened intelligence centered through herself instead of someone else, gave her a sublimely godlike sensation.

Then the TS broke up, Querlak’s intelligence dropped precipitously as the processing power from her clade dropped away from her consciousness. For just a brief moment Querlak sensed the dullness of her ordinary life, then the ability to perceive her normal intelligence as so much lower than that of the TS was gone as well. With the dissatisfaction at her own lack of mental acuity absent, she looked out on the boring agenda of the day in front of her without dismay.

Querlak relieved herself amongst the starchy tubers of the nearby field of delan and ate food from her travel pack. With a sigh she took to the air and resumed her inspection of the rimwall, flying slowly along the wall where it met the fields and carefully watching for any signs of cracking or fraying.

***

Allan spoke in Ell’s ear. “Sigwald will land on the plains of the ringworld in five minutes.”

Ell stood up from where she’d been meeting with the Tau Ceti team. “Sorry guys, I’ve got a time critical issue to deal with. Anything else exciting happening with the Teecees?”

Piscova, the linguist, lifted her hand briefly for attention. “Goldy appears to have ascended to the very top of the social ladder in their tribe. She’s made two major contributions to their society: teaching them to hunt from the air with spears and how to build snares to leave on the forest trails at night. Even more importantly, she has now successfully sutured small wounds in the wings of two more tribe members, something that the tribe regards as almost magical. I have the impression that they regard her with something akin to reverence.”

“That’s great to hear. I’ve come to like him quite a bit.” Harald Wheat said, perpetuating the group’s chronically good natured tiff over whether to refer to the androgynous aliens as “he,” “she” or “it.”

Ell laughed, “OK, see you guys at next week’s meeting.”

Walking to her office Ell looked up at her HUD and saw what looked for all the world like a farmer’s field rising up to meet Siwald. Once she’d shut the door Ell stepped astride the waldo saddle she’d had placed in her office. She put on some real waldo goggles. With this waldo control setup she could operate Sigwald on the ringworld as well as remotely running waldoes at ET Resource’s low earth orbit habitat or the asteroid mine. More importantly, this waldo controller had a narrow bicycle type seat and clips for her shoes so she could move Sigwald’s legs by moving her own legs.

Ell gazed around in astonishment at what looked like endless square fields of some kind of crop. If they weren’t crops, somehow the enormous flat plain of at least this part of the ring appeared to be covered with only one kind of plant. Perhaps they all just looked the same from a distance?

Ell guided Sigwald down to land at a road intersection, or at least where what looked like roads joined. “Ring circling” roads ran parallel to the upcurving rimwall. More of them could be seen running in parallel farther and farther out onto the ring floor until they disappeared in the hazy distance. Other “ring crossing” roads, perpendicular to the rimwall, ran out across the floor of the ring toward its center. Perhaps they went all the way across to the other rimwall? The perpendicular roads divided the fields of plants into huge squares. Some of the roads in the distance had what looked like huge fences on them. Fences of dark columns or posts with gaps between them. Windbreaks maybe?

Once he’d—Ell considered “Sigwald” to be a male-sounding name, so thought of the waldo as a boy—landed on the dark gray surface of the road, Ell walked him over to the edge to look at the plants. The road’s surface was higher than the field and curved down to either side from its crown so that rain, if such fell, would wash it clean. A small section rimward of the field of plants was filled with dark brown material. Compost? In the field the plants themselves were stubby, thick stemmed affairs with just a few very large, chlorophyll green leaves in a bunch at the top. They looked a little like short palms. The ground underneath the plants lay mostly in darkness because the leaves appeared to catch almost all the light that fell on them.

Sigwald reported the air pressure to be 3.45 atmospheres. Temperature was 36o C or about 97o F. Ell looked around. She saw no evidence of farmers. Despite having an unobstructed view over a tremendous distance she didn’t even see any signs of habitation. The place felt deserted, though she didn’t think that could be possible. The ring arced up and away into a blue sky on either side. The fields stretched away into a hazy distance interrupted only by the perpendicular roads. It gave the appearance of a checkerboard on which all the squares were the same color of green. Slicing obliquely across the fields and approaching rapidly was the shadow of “ring night.”

Ell reached out and pulled up a plant to examine it. The dense root system dripped water with what looked like a few bits of rotting vegetable matter intermingled. It didn’t have the granular structure of soil. Looking back down where it came from showed some kind of black perforated structure with pebbly material on it. Hydroponics? She pulled the plant up onto the road and spread it out. The broad leaves pulled off fairly easily suggesting that they were seldom exposed to heavy weather or winds. The bottom of the mostly vertical stem was very thick and, when she bent it, it broke open, pouring a thick white liquid out onto the black road. A small sample of leaf inserted in Sigwald’s test kit came out positive for DNA, just like the specimens from Tau Ceti had.

As the rapid rotation of the ringworld turned his part of the ring so that it faced away from the sun, shadow swept over Sigwald. With the ringworld rotating its full 360 degrees every 3.03 hours the “days” and “nights” on the inside of the ring were only about an hour and a half each. The sky quickly faded from blue to black and now Ell could see the other side of the brightly lit ring arching overhead. Approximately 5,000 kilometers wide and only 20,000 kilometers away, to the eye the ring had a visual width of about fourteen degrees, and of course it arced all the way across the sky. The visual diameter of earth’s moon is only a half a degree, so in comparison to that, the ring appeared enormous. It lit the dark side of the ring where Sigwald stood far more brightly than the full moon lit the night back on earth. The ring arching overhead appeared to be an unremitting green except for a blue strip down the middle.

Ell turned Sigwald to look at the area right around him. The lighting seemed less like evening twilight and more like a cloudy day.

Ell gently tossed the majority of the wrecked plant back down onto the field and turned Sigwald back onto the dark surface of the intersection. She chose the ring crossing road that travelled perpendicularly away from the rimwall and out across the floor of the ring toward the middle. She activated the jets under Sigwald’s feet and he began sliding on “ground effect” down the road toward the middle of the broad ring’s inner surface. Allan could control Sigwald for a simple drive down the road out into the ring, so Ell unharnessed from the waldo controller and headed back out into the D5R research area.

***

As she flew along, Querlak mechanically swept her eye up and down from the upper rimwall to the edge of the fields. She had begun looking forward to her next break to eat. Suddenly her eye caught an anomaly at the corner of a field next to the rimwall. Querlak broke flight and began to coast down toward what she’d seen. Concerned about what might have happened but secretly relieved to have a break in her routine inspection flight she sharpened her focus on the smear at the intersection of the service roads. What had first caught her eye was the brilliant contrast of some white material on the black surface of the road. But as she neared she could see that there was some green material too. Landing, she saw that one of the delan plants had been pulled up onto the road and broken apart! Most of the plant had been tossed back down onto the field but the white sap that had leaked out of its broken body was what had sharply stained the road to first catch Querlak’s attention.

Who would do that? Querlak didn’t consider the possibility that an animal might have done it because there were no animals on the ringworld, other than the farmers themselves. Querlak felt confused and uncertain, so she reached out for a working TS, calling on her clade for help. Moments later her daughter, father, gf, gm, ggm and ggf had lent her processing power and Querlak looked about with markedly increased clarity and intelligence.

Querlak touched the sap, noting that it had congealed on the surface and trapped a light coating of dust. This happened in the last rotation or two, she thought. As she looked about she noticed that it must have been a few days since the last rain at this location because there was dust on the road and leaves. Not a large amount, but much more than had fallen on the delan sap. At the road intersection though, the dust had been diffusely blown away. Perhaps by Querlak’s own wing beats on landing? She stared about uncertainly. Perhaps by something else? It seemed like more dust was gone than her own luffing as she landed should have produced but she couldn’t be sure.

Looking around her eye widened, there is actually only a narrow strip where the dust is blown off the road! What could have done that! The narrow path in the dust trailed off down the ring-crossing road toward the central sea.

Querlak stepped down into the field to examine the damaged delan plant. She could see the disruption in the bedding surface and pellets where it had been pulled up. It had been the nearest plant to the road intersection.  Several leaves had been pulled off the plant and its fat stem broken to let the nutritious white sap spill onto the road above.

Even with the increased mental acuity from the TS, Querlak could not imagine why anyone would have damaged the plant. Perhaps someone had been rendered isol and no one had recognized it?

Anyone whose immediate ancestors and descendants all died could be left isol, completely unbound from the network of their clade. Almost all such persons soon went insane. If the clade they had been isolated from cared deeply about the isol, the clade would try to find someone from within their own clade yet genetically unrelated to the isol who might be willing to mate with the isolated one. Such mercy matings were permitted despite the current extreme restrictions on reproduction. The clade’s hope would be that a child would come quickly enough that the fetus would bind the isol back into the original clade. When sigmas recognized that someone had been cut off and they didn’t have a clade member that was willing to mate with them, the sigmas at least took such an isol to a reserved area to live with other isols. There the hope was that they would mate with another isol and have a child quickly enough to at least be bound into a group of three. A clade of three was far from ideal but it would often restore their sanity. With a few more children they would have a large enough clade to return to productive society. Unfortunately, many isols died before they produced a fetus that could bind them, even if someone in their clade did care enough to mate with them and try to bind them back to their home clade.

The dreadful fear of becoming an isol acted as a powerful driver of procreation for the sigmas. They considered cladeless isolation to be a fate much worse than death.

Thus, sigmas didn’t just have the evolutionary need to reproduce that drove other animals. Their intelligence and clade binding had also given them an overwhelming desire to be bound to the others in their clade through many children, thus minimizing their chances of becoming a desolate isol.

This desire had driven the massive overpopulation of their home planet.

Querlak looked around a little more without finding any other clues to what had happened. For a minute the TS widely expanded itself by adding more members to see if even more intelligence could elucidate the event, but without success. Whatever had torn up the plant and left the trail was a mystery, whether it was a sigma, a device, or a natural phenomenon. However, the high intelligence TS concluded that understanding what had happened was important enough to be worth sending Querlak after it. With a mental shrug Querlak rose into the air and began to follow the strange trail blown from the dust on the ring crossing road. As that task required little cleverness, the TS disbanded as she flew along the roadway. The loss of the TS again left Querlak with a vague pang of regret over her loss of intellect.

***

Ell’s AI Allan said, “Sigwald has encountered fields with a different crop.”

Ell glanced up at her HUD and saw that the fields were indeed a lighter green. The plants looked like large grass, reminding her of grain crops on earth. Again there was a trough of rotting matter just rimward of the field. “Let’s stop and look at it.” Ell’s car was nearly to the little house Shan shared with Ryan. There she wouldn’t have access to a waldo controller for direct control of Sigwald. She could go back to her house or to D5R but didn’t want to.

Allan let Sigwald coast to a stop and shut off the compressed air jets on the bottom of his feet. The hovercraft effect of the jets gone, Sigwald’s feet settled to the roadway.

Ell asked Allan to have Sigwald turn around, scanning the surroundings. Back a ways she could see the darker green plants Sigwald had first encountered. Distantly she noticed that the jets on Sigwald’s feet had left a trail in the dust on the road. For a moment she wondered if she should break the trail by having Sigwald fly higher for a while. Then she decided that that would be pointless. After all, she wanted to meet the inhabitants. It would be counterproductive to hide Sigwald’s presence.

Ell asked Allan to have Sigwald reach out and pull the top of one of the plants toward himself. A tufted brown section at the top had multiple pods which, when crushed, exuded a crumbly brown paste. Without direct control over the waldo, every step of this took time as Ell verbally directed Sigwald through Allan. Then it required even more time for Ell to give instructions correcting clumsy moves and misunderstandings about what she had intended for Sigwald to do. AIs were great at moving things like cars and planes from one mapped GPS destination to another. Moving the hand on a waldo to accomplish a new 3D task remained far more difficult. An AI could repeat a move that had been done once by a human and do it perfectly over and over. But figuring out how to reach out and grab something and move it in a specific manner when told to, a simple task for the human brain, remained difficult for an AI.

The leaves of this new type of plant began a little below the fruiting tuft. They seemed a little wider than typical wheat or oat leaves but narrower than corn leaves. Ell was about to have Sigwald try to pull a plant up and look at the roots when the door of her car opened and Shan leaned down, “Is something wrong?”

Ell smiled up at him. He looked concerned. She held up a finger to get him to wait a second. To Allan she said, “Put a specimen in the DNA assay kit, then keep going the same direction you were going before.” She stepped up out of the car and put her arms around Shan’s neck, “Hey there Mr. Fiancé.”

“Hey there yourself. I saw your car pull up and thought you’d be right in to give me the affection I need… Ten minutes later you’re still sitting out here in your car!” He frowned, “Something happening on Tau Ceti?”

Ell blinked and tilted her head questioningly, wondering why he was asking about Tau Ceti.

“You know, ‘cause you’re ‘getting DNA specimens’ and ‘going the same direction.’”

“Oh… yeah.” Ell said, feeling guilty for letting him continue thinking that she’d been talking about Tau Ceti. She didn’t want to keep secrets from Shan, but so far she hadn’t told anyone but Emma about the Sigma Draconis ringworld. She kind of regretted telling Emma and had no idea what she’d do when people began demanding to know what she’d found on worlds around other stars. On the other hand, she trusted Shan with her life and could use someone to talk to about the ringworld and its implications. She grinned and leaned into him as they walked up the brick path to his little house. “Did you make me a nice dinner?”

Shan watched bemusedly as Raquel ate three of the large fish tacos he’d made.

“These are great!” she said, then leaned forward on her elbows to look into his eyes. “I need some advice.”

He shrugged. “Sure. What can I give you advice on?”

“Well, first, I apologize for letting you think I was talking about Tau Ceti out there in my car. Actually, I was talking to Allan about Sigma Draconis.”

“Really? I didn’t know you’d reached any other stars.”

“Well, we’ve reached a world around Alpha Centauri. It has life on it but doesn’t seem to have anything multicellular. At least not that we can see from orbit. We’ve actually got some rockets nearing several other stars that don’t even have reasonably sized planets in the liquid water zone. We’re thinking of offering those rockets as viewing platforms to astronomers who might want to simply observe those systems optically.”

Shan narrowed his eyes, “But it sounds like Sigma Draconis has more advanced life. Is it intelligent?”

“Shan, they’ve built a ringworld.”

“My God! All the way around the sun, like in Niven’s book?”

“Oh, no! Niven’s ringworld wouldn’t have maintained a stable orbit and it would have to have been built out of material with absolutely impossible tensile strength. There are countless things on Niven’s ringworld that are not only impossible with current tech but will probably never be possible. No, the Sigma Draconis ring is only 20,000 kilometers in diameter. It’s turning eight revolutions per day. It could be constructed with carbon nanotubes or graphene, if you could make enough of those carbon allotropes.”

“Holy crap Raquel! That’s still freaking enormous! A circumference of 63,000 kilometers! How wide is it?”

“About 5,000 kilometers.”

“So that’s what… 315 million square kilometers of surface!?”

Ell nodded. “About 60% the surface area of the earth. A lot bigger than their homeworld.”

“How thick is it?”

“Can’t tell, but even if it were only five meters thick, that would still require 1.6 million cubic kilometers of carbon assuming they built it out of graphene.”

Shan closed his eyes, “That kind of engineering… that’s just plain scary,” he whispered.

Ell raised an eyebrow, “You’re telling me.”

“So, is the life there DNA based?”

“The first specimen, a plant, was.” Ell glanced up at her HUD. “Oh, and the second plant was DNA based too. Seems like the DNA molecule is pretty ubiquitous.”

“What are the intelligent beings like?”

“Haven’t seen one yet.”

“Really? They built a ringworld but aren’t living there?”

Ell shrugged, “I don’t know. So far all Sigwald has encountered are fields of what appear to be crops. At first they seemed to only be one type, but he’s just encountered a second kind of plant.”

“Sigwald?”

“My name for the waldo that’s actually on the ringworld.”

He got a distant look, “Maybe the plants are intelligent?”

Ell shrugged, “Can’t rule that out, but the plants we’ve seen don’t have hands. How would they build a ringworld?”

“Can I see?”

Ell ported the video from Sigwald to Shan’s HUD and he leaned back, flabbergasted as the view from Sigwald raced along the road between the fields. A road that shot arrow straight into the distance until even the transparent atmosphere had deflected enough light that nothing could be seen but a bluish haze. High in the far distance he thought perhaps he could see a wall rising up above the haze. “Is the bottom of the ring flat from side to side?”

“No, it’s dished some toward the middle. In just a few minutes the sun will go down and you’ll be able to see the other side of the ring because that side’ll be the one lit by the sun. You’ll be able to see that there appears to be a blue circle sea running along the middle of the ring. That would fit with the middle being the deepest part of the ring. Water would run from the rims down to the central circle sea. A typical weather cycle could then evaporate water out of the sea. The water vapor would rise and move to the higher edges of the ring. When the air got to the higher altitudes near the rimwalls it would precipitate out as rain and start running back downhill across the fields again.”

Shan glanced around the edges of the field of view in Sigwald’s camera, seeing some clouds he hadn’t paid attention to before. “Wouldn’t rain wash all the soil down to the sea without tectonics to raise some land again?”

Quietly Ell said, “I think the ring’s like a huge hydroponic system. No real soil, other than the composting of previous crops to release soluble nutrients. They must have some way to pump nutrient elements back out to the edge of the ring because the water cycle alone would take all the nutrients out to the sea like you said. Of course, breakdown of the un-harvested plant matter in the composting would provide a lot of those nutrients.”

Ringshadow—Ell didn’t think it was dark enough to call it “sunset”—swept over Sigwald. Ell had Allan tip his head back so Shan could look up at the other side of the ring, now so much more visible.

“Wow! That’s… impressive. But so uniform, kinda uninspired. I’d like to think that if we’d built it, it wouldn’t be so… monotonous.”

“Me too.” Ell almost whispered. “It’s hard to imagine what circumstance would cause them to build something like this. Is it just a farm?”

“Hey, there’s something happening up ahead to the left.”

Ell had Allan turn Sigwald’s head that way. They could see dust rising from something. “Shall we head over that way and have a look?

“Yeah.”

Allan slowed Sigwald and turned him to the left at the next intersection, then right again. Several such turns brought Sigwald fairly close to the disturbance. Slowing further the waldo crept around the next corner and stopped. They looked on in astonishment. A huge machine hung like a bridge all the way across the field. It hung from an impossibly lightweight looking spidery frame with huge spindly wheels that were rolling along the roads on each side of the field. A box in the middle looked like it might hold an operator. The dust they’d seen rose from the leading edge which was sucking in the tufted tops of the grain-like plants. Whatever processing it was doing to the tufts generated the dust, apparently fine plant debris. Behind the trailing edge of the huge machine all the plants—not just the tufts—were gone! As they watched, the machine stopped over the trough at the rimward edge of the field and disgorged a huge mass of vegetable matter. It appeared to be the chopped residue of the plants the machine had pulled up from the field. After a moment the machine resumed moving. It crossed the rimwall paralleling circle-road to the next field.

As they stared after the machine they heard a flapping noise from behind Sigwald.

When Sigwald’s head had turned they saw their first sigma.

Querlak had nearly despaired of catching whatever was leaving the trail blown from the road’s dust. She had decided it must be moving at least as fast as her best flying speed, perhaps faster. Leaving her assigned inspection task would cost her unless she could demonstrate that a greater value to the sigmas had come from her pursuit. If she never caught the perpetrator of the plant damage, or if it had already been caught by someone else by the time she arrived, this detour of hers would be a total loss. While considering whether to turn back she briefly missed the fact that the trail in the dust had turned left. She saw the deviation just as she passed the intersection and had to fly back across the corner of the field. She found the trail again and followed it right at the next intersection.

Then left again, and right after that. The diagonal travel the repeated turns produced took Querlak toward a harvester. She wondered if her fugitive intended to intersect with the harvester or if the chosen direction was accidental.

At the next intersection Querlak’s eye caught on the huge harvester and she almost missed the small metallic object in the road. Just before overflying it she saw it and back beat her wings. Halted, she sank to the road behind the… thing? Wide eyed with surprise, Querlak immediately sent out a request for links and quickly established a TS with seven members. In human terms this boosted her IQ from about 70 to about 107. With this increased clarity, Querlak studied the object. It appeared to be made mostly of metal! Stationary now, the trail of disturbed dust led right up to it, indicating that it was indeed what Querlak had been following. It must have been moving moments ago.

Because Sigma Draconis was a somewhat metal poor star and the sigmas’ home world had far less metal than earth, metal was precious to them. With limited access to metals in their civilization they’d learned to use carbon as their structural material of choice early on. They’d rapidly moved from plant cellulose, to carbon fiber, to nanotubes, to graphene, saving metals for other more important uses. They’d been making things from carbon for so long and did it so well and so cheaply that finding a structural object made from metal suggested wasteful extravagance to a sigma. It affected Querlak much like finding a gold car would strike a human. Carbon structure was cheaper, lighter and so, so much stronger. Making something out of metal suggested a clade that wished to impress with its wealth.

Then the top of the object rotated and faced Querlak. It had two lenses reminiscent of eyes but arranged horizontally!

Astonished and feeling out of her depth with just a seven person TS, Querlak put out a call for more members. The clade connected thirteen more sigmas to her, boosting her IQ to approximately 124. Because Querlak’s clade wasn’t large, taking this many members away from their assigned tasks to help process this single phenomenon represented a large commitment, but no one complained. This… object… or machine… or being… represented a singular event in sigma history.

The 20 person TS studied the metal object. Most, if not all of it looked like it was made of the twelfth element magnesium. Magnesium was the second most common metal after iron and much lighter. If you were going to make a mobile artifact out of metal, using magnesium would make some sense. Still magnesium was a lot heavier than carbon and much, much weaker, why would anyone do that? The object stood on two lower projections and had two upper projections that looked like they might be used for manipulation. Why so few?

As Querlak watched, the bottom two projections moved independently to rotate the entire object so that the opposite side of the object now faced toward Querlak. The TS decided from their movements that the lower projections were in fact legs of some sort. The lenses or eyes at the top rotated as the object did so that they remained facing Querlak. Surprisingly, despite having legs like an animal, the object had no wings! Querlak had, of course, never seen an animal, but records showed that a few of the historical animals of the sigmas’ home world had lived flightless lives. However, even those animals had possessed vestigial wings. The first truly successful body plans on the sigmas’ home world had all had wings, so essentially all animals, even the few flightless ones, had descended from winged ancestors.

Querlak wondered, could the object be some kind of metallic animal? It seemed so misshapen. Only two legs and those very thick and blocky. Only two arms, also overly bulky and powerful looking. No wings. The rotating part up top with the presumed eyes on it, that almost made sense, but it seemed much larger than it needed to be. And why only two eyes in a horizontal arrangement? Querlak knew that you had to have more than one eye to have depth perception which was determined by the angle between the two eyes and an object. But why two medium sized eyes rather than one large high quality eye with a few, little, low quality, wide angle eyes that served only to determine the angle to an object and watch the periphery? Such an arrangement had been nearly universal for the animals on Sigma. As Querlak studied the eyes, she realized that the two eyes pivoted and swiveled toward and away from one another as if both had high acuity vision and measured the angle to an object by the direction they were pointed! This seemed highly inefficient as compared to a single very high acuity eye with low acuity ones that only registered direction by where light fell on their receptors…

Everything about the strange… object… seemed so bizarre. If it was an animal, how had it evolved so strangely and why had no one in her clade ever heard of one? If someone had built it as a device… why!? And if you were going to build a strange animal-like device, why such a bizarre layout of parts? Why magnesium?! It must be difficult to balance it on only two legs. Its thick and heavy metal construction would be so expensive and require so much power just to move it! It almost seemed like someone had made it as a joke… a hugely expensive joke.

Shan and Ell gawked at the sigma on their screens. It had four long, slender, multijointed legs that seemed somewhat insectile. They looked too small to hold it up, but of course the gravity was low. The four wings came off the nearly horizontal body, one pair forward, the other pair nearer the back. Four lightweight limbs at the front had three digits each. They appeared to be for manipulation.

Sprouting from between the “arms” was a somewhat heavier limb with what appeared to be eyes near its end. Because of the eyes Ell categorized that limb as a “head” even though it seemed too small to be a head. Of course, the teecees had a small and prehensile head too. The teecee’s brains were in the main body rather than in the head so that might be true here too. The sigma’s head was barely wide enough for what appeared to be one very large eye. The head narrowed above that, where some smaller eyes formed a column going up to the top of the head and perhaps even over the top to the back? The eyes didn’t appear to swivel like earth’s animal’s eyes do. Rather the sigma seemed to move the entire head to point it at things. Right now it tilted up, then down as if examining Sigwald from top to bottom. Then the head swayed to the left and right, turning the eye back toward Sigwald from each side. The head didn’t seem to have ears, or a mouth, or actually, an orifice of any kind.

Ell had Allan lift one of Sigwald’s hands slowly to a palm forward position. She wondered if this peaceful human gesture would be perceived as friendly by the sigma. She turned to Shan, “I’ve got to get to my house where I’ll have better control of the waldo. Do you want to come with?”

“I thought I wasn’t to be seen at your place?”

“We’ll have to sneak you in,” she said, getting up.

They drove to the house that Ell’s security team kept in the neighborhood next to her little farm. In transit they watched the sigma on their HUDs. It didn’t move but they could hear it making noise. No mouth moved so it wasn’t clear where the sound came from.

They parked in the security team’s garage and hustled down into the tunnel. As they rode the golf cart through the tunnel to Ell’s house the sigma began gesticulating on their HUDs. As they couldn’t walk and watch their HUDs very well, Ell wound up leading Shan by the hand so that at least one of them could watch the movements of the sigma’s hands. None of the motions made much sense to Shan though.

Once in the house, they went to the extra bedroom where Ell had another one of her waldo controllers. Ell mounted the controller saddle and had the images from Sigwald thrown up on the big screen for Shan. Once she had control of Sigwald she squatted down and made a mark in the dust on the black surface of the roadway.

The mark was visible, though she could have wished for something better. She made two marks next to it and then pointed to the single mark, saying, “One.” She pointed to the double mark and said, “Two.” She made three marks and said, “Three.” She had considered having Sigwald project marks with his laser, but in the bright daylight she didn’t think they would be very easy to see.

Ell waited a moment, then pointed at the single mark while looking at the sigma. When the sigma said nothing Ell began again, pointing at the single mark and saying, “One,” then moving on to the double and triple marks.

Ell pointed at the single mark once again while looking expectantly at the sigma. It was relatively easy to tell what the sigma was looking at because its entire head would move and tilt in that direction. First it looked down at the marks, moving from one to another, then it looked up at Sigwald, then back down at the marks. Then two arms reached out and touched the single mark and it uttered a sound. It sounded a little like a chorus of voices humming in different pitches.

The sound wasn’t something that Ell could reproduce so she told Allan to make the sound back at the sigma while she reached out and touched the single mark again. Once Sigwald had reproduced the sound the sigma made, she moved on to the double mark and said, “Two.”

The sigma pointed back at the single mark and said, “One,” in English, then pointed at the double mark and said, “Two.” After a moment the sigma uttered another sound that Ell would be unable to reproduce, then pointed to the triple mark and made a third sound, then looked expectantly at Sigwald.

Ell had Allan copy the sigma’s sound, then said, “Three.”

It didn’t take long to get through the numbers and determine that the sigmas used base 12 counting. Ell moved Sigwald closer to where the harvester had passed. The thicker dust on the road made writing easier there. She drew a picture of the ring and said, “Ringworld.”

Over the next several hours they exchanged words for the objects in their immediate vicinity and in the sigma’s solar system. The name of the sigma they were speaking to sounded like “Querlak,” if the word were to be spoken by an off key choir. They derived units of measurement from the dimensions of the system and of the ringworld and the road itself. They named the plants and each other and their various parts. Learning body parts allowed Ell to examine the sigma. A crevice beneath the bases of the arms looked as if it might be a mouth but it remained closed while the sigma spoke. Querlak had a number of openings around its body that Ell thought it was breathing through. Though Ell couldn’t localize sound well through Sigwald’s microphones she thought that perhaps the sigma made sounds through those same breathing holes.

Ell felt somewhat apprehensive about having the sigma examine Sigwald, but after Querlak had stood patiently for her own examination, it only seemed fair. Querlak carefully studied the bottom of Sigwald’s feet and the underside of the arms where the compressed air jets were.

Having named nearly everything nearby, they moved on to verbs starting with walk, then fly and eventually everything else that they could demonstrate to one another.

Interrogatives were more difficult. With some hand waving Querlak made it evident that it wanted to see Sigwald travel on the road and to understand how he did it. This allowed them to settle on a word for “how” before Ell lifted Sigwald’s foot and turned on its air jet ports. Ell lowered the foot to the roadway and generated a near frictionless state. She turned on the jets under the other foot then a jet on Sigwald’s back to send him sliding down the road in a demonstration of that hovercraft mode of travel.

Querlak’s TS reached out for even more members, further boosting its intelligence. This… intelligent animal or machine—there could no longer be doubt about its intelligence—named Sigwald must have come from elsewhere. It couldn’t be from Querlak’s own Sigma Draconis system because it was simply too bizarre to have come from the minds of any sigman TS. Even if someone wanted to create it as a joke, Querlak couldn’t believe that this would be the creation. For one thing it wasn’t funny. The sigmas had thoroughly explored their own solar system in the process of creating the ringworld and Querlak could say with confidence that there were no other intelligent beings in the system. In fact, there was no longer any non-sigma animal life at all. At least, nothing larger than a centimeter. When the sigmas had gained intelligence they had rapidly eliminated other animals because those animals consumed resources needed to feed the sigmas’ ever burgeoning population. Thus this bizarre and essentially unimaginable… machine… or being… that confronted Querlak must have come from another solar system. From somewhere across the uncrossable gulf between the stars.

If Querlak’s clade could discover the secret of travel between the stars… they would immeasurably boost their wealth and status. With that secret, the sigmas could build ringworlds in other systems. The sigmas couldn’t build another ringworld in their own system for lack of raw materials. However, the population of their homeworld had by now increased to the point that they were using all the food that even the enormous ring could produce.

The sigmas had once again been forced to severely limit reproduction to prevent starvation. The resulting inability to increase the size of their clades led to worldwide dissatisfaction and depression.

During the massive world-girdling undertaking necessary to build the ringworld, the sigmas had banded together and made tremendous sacrifices toward their mutually desired goal of unlimited reproduction. They built huge ports to harvest hydrogen from one of the gas giant worlds in their system. Using catalysts in 350o C tubes near the sun they mixed that Jovian hydrogen with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of the small rocky world closest to their sun. There the Sabatier reaction gave them methane and water. The methane was used to spin much of the graphene that comprised the ringworld.  They froze the water in the outer system until the ringworld had been constructed. Then they moved the water back to the ringworld to water the crops and broke it down electrolytically to provide oxygen for the ringworld’s atmosphere. Nitrogen came from the ammonia atmosphere of a large Jovian moon. The sigmas had needed more hydrocarbons to make the ring than they could generate from the CO2 of the first world, but another of the Jovian moons had supplied enough additional hydrocarbons from its enormous methane lakes.

Initial plans to move the sigma’s excess population to the ring had foundered on two issues. First, traveling to the ring via ports proved to be excruciatingly painful and significantly lowered the intelligence of the transportees for several years. Despite multiple attempts, they were never able to resolve that issue. Second, living on the ring with its abnormal day-night cycle rendered sigmas infertile.

This infertility might seem desirable for an overpopulated species, but because of their tremendous innate drive to reproduce and thus link to others, living barren on the ringworld was abhorrent. Eventually the ring became a punishment world for criminals. The pain of transport served as a deterrent against crime and the lowering of their intelligence rendered them more manageable, especially since clades rarely included their criminals in transcendental states more than once a day… enough to prevent insanity but not enough to provide the intelligence for misdeeds.

The ringworld was managed by sigmas like Querlak who traveled to it via rockets and desperately awaited a return to the homeworld where they could have the offspring promised to them for undertaking this onerous duty. Criminals whose intelligence had recovered and who evidenced rehabilitation also could work as managers and hope to eventually return to the homeworld.

The managerial sigmas inhabiting the ringworld slept in darkened chambers so that the persistent light on the ringworld didn’t render them mentally unstable. Some of them had great difficulty anyway. Suicide rates were high, but tolerated in their overpopulated society as long as a sigma’s death didn’t leave other individuals isol. If a sigma was another sigma’s only link to their clade, that person could petition successfully to prevent the sigma’s assignment on the ringworld.

Uncountable large ports linked ringworld to homeworld. Ports near the sea transported oxygen and food to the homeworld. Ports near the rimwall brought CO2 and sewage to the ringworld to support the endless farms.

Despite the enormous cost, building another ringworld was a holy grail for the people of Sigma Draconis. They wanted to build a ring that rotated more slowly. If they built a ring 110,000 kilometers in diameter that rotated once every 17 hours like their homeworld, the gravity would be about 17% of normal for the sigmas. Tests had shown that sigmas remained healthy and fertile at that gravity, though they might not be able to return to the homeworld’s heavier gravity afterward. At that rotation rate, the hoop stresses in a ring that size would still be tolerable for their graphene and graphend construction materials. It would provide 1.73 billion square kilometers of living and farming area! That would be five and a half times as much area as the current ringworld and more than 15 times the area of their homeworld. The rimwalls would have to be higher to compensate for the lower compression of the atmosphere, but that would be a minor problem compared to the building of such an enormous ring.

But, they had used up the methane lakes of the Jovian moon and almost all of the CO2 atmosphere of the first small rocky world building the first ring. The only other large sources of carbon in their system were relatively inaccessible contaminants in the other gas giants’ atmospheres. If they could travel to other stars, surely they would find worlds with CO2 atmospheres or other easy sources of hydrocarbons.

This “Sigwald” had come from another star and surely could show the sigmas how to go back there, if not to other systems. All Querlak had to do was convince him to do it. First though, Querlak needed some rest. She lifted into the air and tried to indicate to Sigwald to follow. After a moment it began sliding down the road behind her. They rapidly traveled to one of the small roadside sleeping chambers. There Querlak took Sigwald inside and tried to communicate that Sigwald should wait while she slept.

Chapter Two

Denver—Former Track and Field Olympian Michael Fentis has been noted for downplaying the accomplishments of Ell Donsaii. He has frequently opined that her four gold medals were simple “luck” and that gymnastics isn’t really a sport. Though it is not certain why he expresses so much vitriol on this subject, many attribute it to the persistent discussion of the video showing Donsaii’s run up to the Olympic vault in Dallas. That vid has been said to demonstrate her running faster than his best speed …

Going into this interview Frank Alston felt edgy like he’d never quite felt before. He’d laid minor traps for a few big names in the past, but never anything quite like this. Putting two major sports personalities who’d had serious “beef” with one another onto the same show could be a stroke of genius. Or it could be a major faux pas.

So far, Alston had asked Michael Fentis about who he thought would dominate in the sprints at this summer Olympics. Meanwhile, his assistant was supposed to be entertaining Ell Donsaii off stage and trying to keep Donsaii from checking the monitors. Frank didn’t want Donsaii to recognize who Alston’s other guest was.

But he needed to spring his trap soon, or it might spring itself. Fentis had just finished his response so Frank led with, “Enough about who might win the coming Olympics. Who do you think is the greatest Olympian of games gone by?”

“Carl Lewis,” Fentis said without hesitation.

“Nine golds and a silver,” Frank said. “Now I won’t argue that that’s an amazing total. But quite a few athletes have more medals than Lewis.”

“Yeah, but they’re in sports like swimming and gymnastics where it’s relatively easy to get a lot of medals. Lewis’ ten Olympic medals were in individual events, not ‘team’ medals, or ‘relays.’”

“Michael Phelps won eleven individual golds and thirteen individual medals out of his 22 total swimming medals.”

“Yeah, but a lot of those are for races of the same distance, just using a different stroke. If I could get another medal for running the 100 meters sideways in addition to freestyling it straight down the track, I’d have a lot more than nine golds myself.”

Frank felt no surprise that Fentis had brought up his own medal count. He’d actually been surprised that Fentis didn’t cite himself as the greatest Olympian. He laid it on thick, “And, of course, you’ve broken Lewis’ records and currently hold the world record in all four of Lewis’ events, correct?”

Fentis nodded magnanimously, “That’s true.”

“So maybe the ‘greatest athlete’ is the one with the most world records?”

Fentis shrugged, “One could argue that.”

“What about Latynina? She had the most Olympic medals until Phelps came along.”

“In women’s gymnastics.” Fentis shrugged dismissively. “As I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not sure that prettily bouncing around should be considered a sport.”

“You don’t think there’s athleticism involved in say, the uneven bars?”

“Some, sure, some. But you can’t set a world record. You aren’t judged objectively. You’re only being judged on intangibles by a panel of judges. You can’t compete against previous athletes with those kinds of subjective scores. Even your wins over athletes right there in the same competition with you are often called into doubt.”

“Even when someone like Donsaii performs athletic feats that no one else has ever performed before and that no one has been able to perform since?” Frank motioned surreptitiously to his assistant who walked around the corner with Donsaii.

Alston saw Donsaii’s eyes widen momentarily, then she smiled. He glanced back at Fentis whose lip curled like he’d stepped in something disgusting.

In a quiet but ugly tone Fentis said, “Oh… even for you Alston, this is low.”

Donsaii cheerfully said, “Mr. Fentis! I’ve so admired your career! I tried to get you to sign an autograph for me at the opening ceremony of the Olympics seven years ago but you weren’t able to. Would you mind signing one for me today?”

“I don’t sign autographs.” Fentis growled, “I certainly wouldn’t sign one for you with the things you’ve been saying.”

Donsaii’s eyes rounded in concern, “What have I been saying? Nothing that should upset you, I wouldn’t think.”

“You know! Those ridiculous claims that you run faster.”

Donsaii put her hand to her chest, “Mr. Fentis, I’ve never said anything like that!” She twinkled, “I think some sportscasters may have said some things to that effect, but,” she grinned even more, “you know, they’re just looking to spark some controversy to boost their ratings.” She turned to Alston, “You might be trying to do just that by inviting Mr. Fentis and myself to the same interview, right Mr. Alston?”

For a moment, being confronted this way left Alston speechless. Before he could say anything Fentis turned on him, “Look asshole, I don’t know what you thought you’d accomplish by inviting this stupid bitch to my interview, but I’ll guarantee this will be the last interview you ever get with Michael Fentis.” He stood and stalked off the little stage. Perhaps forgetting he still had on the microphone—or well aware and wanting to get in a parting shot—Fentis said, “Your being pretty enough to turn the judges heads does not make you worthy of a single gold medal in my book bitch.”

Not knowing whether to swallow in dismay, or pump a fist in triumph, Alston turned to Donsaii who hadn’t even seated herself yet. She was frowning after Fentis. Donsaii did look stunningly attractive in a slender black pantsuit with her trademark pearls.

Just like she always did.

Putting on a smile, Alston waved to a seat and said, “Sorry about that, Ms. Donsaii. Won’t you sit down and give us your perspective?”

She tilted her head and eyed him momentarily, then smiled sadly, “Oh Mr. Alston. I don’t think you’re sorry. I think you intended to get Mr. Fentis angry by pulling his chain in a fashion that you could predict would infuriate him. I think you went to great lengths to keep me from being aware that you had Mr. Fentis on the show. You knew that I wouldn’t want to appear on the same show because I wouldn’t want to get him upset. Personally, I think that was extremely rude on your part.” Donsaii also turned and left, but grinned back over her shoulder, “Now I’ll never get Mr. Fentis’ autograph.”

Several hours later, Alston left the studio feeling dismayed. No matter what he’d tried, he couldn’t cut the video so that it didn’t leave him looking like a jerk. Not and have any substantial amount of the interview remaining anyway. He wanted to shitcan the entire interview but his producers insisted that, no matter how bad Alston looked, the vid would be ratings gold for the network. It would go out.

Alston had finally put in a “talking head” segment. In this he juxtaposed Fentis calling Donsaii a “stupid bitch” with others who spoke about her genius in physics. Then he inserted a segment of himself talking about Donsaii’s Medal of Honor for stopping the terrorists and mentioning her Presidential Medal of Freedom for her role in deflecting the comet. To fill out the segment he put in clips of her from previous interviews which made it clear that, indeed, she had never said she was faster than Fentis, those words had all been said by others.

***

Kristen Donsaii climbed the steps to Ell’s house at her little farm. Recognizing her, the door AI unlocked and said, “Hello, Ms. Donsaii. Come on in. I’ve notified Ell that you’re here.”

Kristen opened the door and stepped inside. Ell came bouncing down the stairs to meet her. “Mom! Guess what!” Ell held out her left hand so her mother could look at her ring. “I’m engaged!”

Kristen’s hands came up to her cheeks, “You are! Who?”

“Shan Kinrais. You met him on the island.”

“Oh!” Kristen took her hand to admire the ring, saying, “I liked him.” She raised an eyebrow, “and he’s sooo good looking!” She frowned and lowered an eyebrow, “You’re not just marrying him ‘cause he’s so pretty are you?”

Ell wrinkled her nose and giggled, “No! He’s smart too. Just joining the faculty of the Math Department here at UNC. Wrote a science paper with that Donsaii girl.”

Kristen frowned again, “You’re referring to yourself in the third person? Is my daughter takin’ on airs?”

Ell looked wistful, “Mom, I’m marrying Shan as ‘Raquel,’ not as Ell.”

“What!?” Kristen exploded, “Why on earth would you do that?”

Ell dropped onto the couch with a sigh. As Kristen sat across from her Ell looked at her sadly, “My life as Ell is just crazy, Mom.” She rubbed a finger between her eyebrows, as if just thinking about it would give her a headache. “I hardly go anywhere other than work as ‘Ell.’ When I do, people stop me to ask for autographs, to complain about what I have done, or tell me what they think I should do. I feel bad because Michael Fentis’ refusal to give me an autograph made me so mad, yet I find that I don’t want to spend all my time giving autographs either.”

“Marrying a man as your ‘alter ego’ is even crazier!”

“Mom, think about what my family’s life would be like. Say, someday with a child. First of all I’d have to hire a much bigger security team so they’d have the people to follow Shan and my child around wherever they go.”

“You can afford that. Don’t try to tell me you can’t.”

Ell grimaced, “Sure, but think about it some more. Right now, mostly what I and the security team have to worry about is kidnapping, because the people after me would want to keep me alive to have me do stuff for them. But, they might just threaten to kill members of my family if I don’t do things for them. Holding me hostage to a sniper’s bullet aimed at my child, so to speak. Even if I hired an enormous team like the President, a private citizen can’t go through neighboring buildings to clear every window of crazy people with rifles…” Ell sighed disconsolately, “It would be awful!”

Kristen sank back into her chair, a horrified expression on her face. “You really think it could be that bad?”

“Even if it isn’t,” Ell said, almost in a whisper. “Think about the child. Everyone, from the teachers to the kids, treating her differently. Expecting more because she’s my child. Or perhaps expecting worse because she’s the child of wealth and privilege.”

“She?”

Ell shrugged, “Or he. I always seem to think of any additions to our family as girls because we’ve never had any boys in our family. Well, except Dad who I barely remember and Jake who I hated too much to consider family.”

Kristen got up and stepped to the couch, sitting down beside her daughter. She put her arms around. “Oh Ell,” she sighed. “I’ll admit I hadn’t thought very much about this, but even if you hide it from the outside world, she or he is still going to be the child of wealth and privilege you know.”

“Not if she doesn’t know either.”

Kristen leaned back, a startled look on her face. “You’re kidding, right?!”

“I don’t think so,” Ell said quietly, leaning her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Not until she’s older anyway…”

They stayed like that for a minute, Kristen comforting her daughter with tears rolling down her own cheeks. Then with a sniff she drew back and said with a voice that cracked, “Well then, let’s plan you a wedding, ‘Raquel.’”

***

Kant Fladwami sighed and thought back to the days when he’d thought that the Presidential Science Advisor would simply advise the President on science issues. “How can I help you, Dr. Ementhal?” Fladwami already knew that Ementhal would badger him and he knew what Ementhal would badger him about.

“Straighten your president out!” Ementhal began. “Allowing that Donsaii twit to monopolize Earth’s access to the stars is absolutely the most preposterous thing I have ever heard of! She has no idea what she’s doing. What if this teenager encounters an advanced and inimical civilization? The first thing we may know about it could be when their invasion fleet arrives! You should consider yourself lucky that the first civilization she encountered turned out to be the primitive Teecees!”

“Francis, what would you have the administration do?”

“Turn that technology over to a vetted committee of seasoned scientists. People with scientific credibility. That girl doesn’t even have the stature to obtain a grant!”

Knowing he would regret it, but unable to stop himself, Fladwami snorted gently, “She does have the scientific genius to get results.”

Silence emanated from the other end of the link. Just when Fladwami thought Ementhal might have disconnected, he said, “Kant, I can see I’m going to have to go over your head on this. You may think this is trivial and funny… but the destiny of the human race cannot be allowed to depend on the frivolous whims of this… this girl child.”

“Francis,” Fladwami sighed, “she’s hardly a child and certainly not frivolous. I’d like to remind you that she has a Nobel Prize? You should try talking with her.”

“I’ve tried! Since I first talked to her, her AI’s rejected my calls.” In an appalled tone he said, “I don’t think she even knows who I am!”

Trying not to snort over Ementhal’s indignant disbelief that anyone might not know who he was, Fladwami said patiently, “Francis, Francis, I suspect the problem came when you lectured her, rather than conversing with her. I’ll bet you browbeat and sermonized her, just like you’ve been doing to me.”

“Well… I had to make it obvious how completely inadequate a wet behind the ears airhead without a real degree to her name would be as the ambassador of our planet. Surely she can’t expect to represent us in our encounters with the other intelligent races out there amongst the stars!”

Fladwami sighed, “Dr. Ementhal, I would remind you that Ell Donsaii invented that technology you want us to turn over to your committee. She doesn’t want to share her tech with any committees. She doesn’t want anyone else to have access to that expertise for exactly the same reasons you just forwarded. She, like you, is also afraid that some idiot might piss off an advanced race and get us in real trouble. President Flood and I have discussed this at length and we’ve concluded that, as our world’s most preeminent genius, Ell Donsaii is exactly who we want to be out there deciding how to handle our encounters with advanced aliens.”

Ementhal spluttered, “Just a damn…”

Fladwami rode over him, “Don’t interrupt me, Dr. Ementhal. I have one last thing for you to chew on. Nobody, and I mean no one at all, knows how to open ports to the stars except Donsaii. None of the people who work for her. None of the physicists who’ve studied her papers. No one! So… we cannot take this technology, technology that only she understands or can build, away from her or turn it over to you or your committee. Go over my head if you want, but it won’t get you anywhere unless you can convince Donsaii herself.”

“Just take her funding away from her.”

“Francis she’s self-funded. She doesn’t need us, and she certainly doesn’t need you. Good day.” Fladwami broke the connection, both tremendously satisfied and personally horrified at how he’d handled the conversation.

***

Just after midnight, Ell stepped into the small “lab” at her farm. She reexamined the small wafer she’d worked on the night before. It consisted of one disc of a standard 3mm two ended port, glued to the disc of a single ended port. When both ports were opened, the two ended port connected to its other end which sat in a mechanism on the lab bench behind Ell. The one ended port on the other side of the wafer opened to a point in space in front of it. Ell could designate, through her AI, the distance at which the one ended port opened. Working in conjunction, the one-two port would connect the “first end” of the two ended port where it sat on the bench mechanism, through the one-two wafer, to a point in space in front of the one ended port. That point in space would be at a distance to be chosen by Ell.

This one ended port wasn’t constrained like the one ended ports D5R had admitted to the public that they could make. Those would reach either less than 5mm for medical use or more than one AU for space exploration. Ell was claiming that the intermediate distances weren’t accessible, but actually she just didn’t want people weaponizing the one ended ports. However, this one actually could open at any distance Ell chose and communicated to her AI—because she did intend to use it as a weapon if forced to do so. Unfortunately, the distance accuracy of the one ended port remained plus or minus about 10% which could present some problems.

All in all, the wafer with the two ports was 3.2 mm in diameter and about 3mm in thickness. She mounted it in a small vice in front of the dartboard she had in her lab.

Ell turned to her lab bench where she had a number of devices mounted under a motorized pivoting ring that Manuel had built for her. The “first end” of the two ended port in the vise was mounted on the ring. She gave the ring a quick once over then said to Allan, her AI, “Load succs four, two.”

The ring spun quickly and put the end of the double ended port over an injector.

“Fire.” The injector pump pushed succs, or succyinylcholine, forward into the double ended port. Two ccs of the paralytic agent went through the two ended port, into the single ended port and out through it. With a tiny spark of light from the opening of the one ended port, a spray of fluid appeared in space four centimeters in front of the vice, where the single ended port of the one-two wafer had delivered it.

“Load Versed ten, one... Fire.” The ring spun to a different location and another spray appeared in the air ten centimeters in front of the wafer, this time comprised of one cc of the powerful sedative midazolam.

“Load pepper fifty, two... Fire.” The ring spun to a different location and another spray, this time with two cc of capsaicin solution sprayed into the air fifty centimeters in front of the wafer.

“Load Taser four... Fire.” The ring spun over a Taser dart gun which fired as ordered. From a point in the air four centimeters in front of the vise, the Taser dart shot through the air to stick quivering into the dart board.

Ell took the wafer out of the vise and carefully inserted it into a small, thin walled titanium canister with a metal stem on one end. She screwed a back onto the canister and tightened it. She put the canister in the “inserter” she’d had Manuel make for her. She sprayed it down with ethanol.

While she waited for the ethanol to dry, she closed her eyes and considered whether there was any way to further reduce the waste energy that produced the little spark of light when the one way port opened? She’d tightened things up through multiple redesigns now and the spark was much less than it had once been. But, she would like it if nothing called attention to the location or existence of the ports for this weaponized use.

Also, if she worked on the spark issue for a while longer, she could avoid this next step.

She shook her head and took a deep breath. She felt confident she couldn’t make the sparks disappear completely. The time had come to do it. She’d done trials with wooden dowels and chicken bones. The inserter worked reliably. The “one-port/two-port” wafers functioned consistently. She took a deep breath and put her left index finger into the inserter up to the second knuckle. Bending that knuckle she snapped down a metal bar behind it that she’d designed to keep herself from jerking her finger out of the inserter in reaction to the pain she expected port implantation to produce.

To Allan, her AI she said, “OK, install port in finger.”

In response, within a twenty millisecond period a one ended port opened and closed hundreds of time within the middle phalangeal bone of her finger. Each opening and closing moved a little farther into the bone. The port opening and closings cut through the spongy bone inside the phalanx, fragmenting the bone into tiny spicules. Finally two ports opened, one at the far end of the section of fragmented bone and another at the beginning. With the two ports open, the “one-port/two-port” wafer was punched through the distal port. The bone chips and marrow were forced out the proximal port leaving the wafer in their place. When the last port closed, it cut off the titanium stem that the wafer had been mounted on, leaving only the wafer and its canister snugly installed inside the bone of her finger.

To Ell it felt like someone had smashed her finger with a hammer. “Shit!” she exclaimed, popping the bar loose that had held her finger in the inserter. Gritting her teeth she squeezed and rubbed her finger. “Hitting her finger with a hammer” wasn’t an unrealistic description she thought, since the driver that punched the port into the bone delivered a significant impact. Ell had wanted it to happen fast enough that she couldn’t involuntarily move her finger and the one way port delivering the wafer into her bone couldn’t shut off and cut the wafer in half. It would be terrible to have half a useless wafer embedded in her finger. There aren’t a lot of nerve endings inside the bone so the pain wasn’t horrible… but she definitely wasn’t looking forward to installing another in her right index finger.

For now she took a couple of Aleve and went back over to her house.

***

Shan stepped in the door of 411 West, an Italian restaurant on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Before the hostess looked up, Shan saw Raquel sitting at a table in the back corner with another woman. Waving off the hostess he made his way back to their table. “Hey Raquel.”

She smiled brilliantly up at him, “Hey yourself. You remember my Mom, Kris Blandon?”

“Of course, so good to see you.” Shan said, while thinking Kris Blandon? Ell’s Mom had a blond wig covering her auburn hair. The wig had long hair, but it was piled up on her head in some kind of bun. “What are we celebrating tonight?”

“Celebrating?” Kristen said, “Hah! This is a working dinner. We’re planning your wedding young man.”

Shan looked at Ell, “I thought all this planning went on in the background and then I just got my marching instructions, ‘show up here, do this, etcetera?’”

She grinned back, “Yeah, you’re right. You aren’t making any decisions here pretty boy, we just need your help understanding of the ‘lay of the land’ before we embark on our campaign.”

Kristen winked at her, “Careful girl. You don’t want to get too bossy before the wedding, you might scare him off.”

Ell quirked an eyebrow, “He doesn’t scare that easy.” She turned to the waitress who’d approached. “Let’s place our orders.” They busied themselves with the menus for a moment.

When the waitress left, Ell turned to Shan, “So, what we need your help with is, how many people? Small family wedding? Big deal with lots of your relatives?”

Shan raised an eyebrow, “What does my bride want?”

“That’s the right answer.” She turned to her mother and winked, “See, I told you how perfect he was!” Then Ell turned back to Shan and tilted her head, “Sadly I don’t have a lot of close relatives. Both my Mom and Dad were only kids. The only grandparent I still have alive is my Gram on Mom’s side. I have some distant cousins but none that I’ve had a lot to do with.” She shrugged, “And of course,” she said quietly “‘Raquel’ doesn’t actually have any relatives.” “I do have friends who know both sides of me, but not all that many. The distant relatives I have, I don’t know well enough to trust with the secret of Raquel.”

“Sounds like ‘small’ would be better then?”

Ell shrugged, “Doesn’t have to be. You can invite hordes of relatives and I can have just a few. It’ll be OK. I don’t mind if your relatives feel sorry for me and my itty bitty family.”

“Let me talk to my parents. If we’re going to have a big wedding, mostly for my relatives, maybe they’d pitch in for the costs.”

Ell’s mother looked at her with a puzzled expression. Ell shook her head at her mother, then turned to Shan saying. “Let me talk to you about that issue later.”

Kristen said, “Find out whether your family wants to invite a lot of people or not. Don’t worry about the cost. But, if we want to limit the numbers we could call it a ‘destination wedding’ and have it on the island.”

“Oooohh, having it on the island would be cool! Would your company really let you do that?”

Kristen again looked curiously at Ell but didn’t say anything. Ell said, “We’d be able to work that out.”

“But how would people get to the island? There aren’t any commercial flights are there?”

“That could be worked out too.” Ell turned to her mother, “Maybe Gram could pose as my rich grandmother?”

Shan looked from mother to daughter a very puzzled look on his face. “Huh? How would that solve anything?”

Ell sighed, “Let me explain later, OK?”

The waitress arrived with their dinners which forestalled further questions.

While they ate Ell asked, “Are you wanting your family to know about… the other me?”

Shan nodded.

“Can they keep a secret?”

“Yeah, in fact they’re keeping a secret about one of our family members at present.”

“Really? What kind of secret?”

Shan grinned, “Well, now, if I were to tell you that, we wouldn’t be very good at keeping secrets would we?”

Ell laughed, “I guess not. Do you think they could keep my secret with the same degree of confidence?”

“I’d make them promise to hold it to that degree before I told them.”

Ell tilted her head, “I guess that’s good enough for me. Who do you want to tell?”

“Just Mom, Dad and my two sisters.”

“I can live with that.”

After dinner Kristen headed back to her home in Morehead City and “Raquel” went with her fiancé to the little house Shan and Ryan rented. When they stepped into the apartment Ryan said, “Hey guys.” He was sitting at the small dining table eating chili directly out of a small frying pan.

Shan said, “That chili straight out of a can?”

Ryan snorted, “Nope! You can see for yourself I put it in ‘dis here fryin’ pan and done heat it up.”

“Well, I’d like to say thanks for acting so low class, it keeps me from worrying about you making any time with Raquel.”

“Oh, you can put your mind at ease. I’ve given up on Raquel. She’s exhibited the poor taste required to get engaged to you. Nope, I’ve set my sights on her boss.”

“Her boss?”

“Oh, yeah. Workin’ with Donsaii on my neurotrodes and that prosthetic hand—I’ve realized I’m in love.” He waggled his eyebrows. “It’s just a matter of time before Ell realizes she loves me too.”

A smile started spreading across Shan’s face.

Ell grabbed Shan’s arm and started pulling him back towards his room. “Shan and I need to talk.” As they turned into the little hall to Shan’s room she said back over her shoulder to Ryan, “Good luck with that ‘tangled web’ you’re weaving.”

As Ell closed Shan’s door, Ryan called out, “Raquel, you’re pretty hot, but no one holds a candle to Donsaii.” He muttered, “I just have to figure out how to make my move.”

As Ell shoved Shan onto his bed he snorted, “That’s rich! First he’s trying to steal ‘Raquel’ from me, now he’s setting his sights on Ell?!”

“Oh, he was never serious about stealing Raquel.”

Shan put his arms around her and pulled her tight, “Couldn’t blame him if he was. It’d just show he had amazing taste.”

“He’s a nice guy. I just wish he’d go for Bridget. She really likes him.”

“Really?”

“Um hmm.” Ell said snuggling her head into Shan’s shoulder.

“Raquel, is it OK if I tell him that? He thinks she’s pissed at him.”

“No kidding?” Ell said. She appreciated how careful Shan was to always use her “Raquel” name when she was done up as Raquel. He didn’t ever want to mix up and call her the wrong name in public. “Sure, tell Ryan… It’d be nice if they got together.”

After a pause Shan said, “So, are you going to explain that stuff about your Gram posing as your ‘rich grandmother’? ‘Pretending’ she’s rich isn’t going to fly my relatives out to the island.”

Ell sighed, “We could have her charter a plane to fly everyone there.”

“Oh, why didn’t I think of that?” He raised his eyebrows as if surprised, “Oh, maybe because we’d still have to come up with the money to charter a plane. Charters are pretty expensive Raquel.”

“Um, Shan…”

As the silence drew out, Shan pulled his head back to look down at her. “Hey, what aren’t you telling me? Is your grandmother actually rich?”

“Well, kinda.”

“Really?” Shan’s brow furrowed. “All the news I saw about you guys back in your Olympic days implied that your family was poor. Where’d the money come from?”

In a small voice Ell said, “From me.”

“Huh?! Where’d you get the money? Wait a minute,” his eyes narrowed, “how much are they paying you out there at D5R?”

“Shan,” she almost whispered, “I own D5R.”

“Get out!” he snorted, “Why is there a board of directors then?”

Ell shrugged, “There isn’t. I just pretend that there’s a board so no one’ll realize I’m the one making all the decisions.”

“Raquel…” he tilted his head, “Where’s all this money coming from? I don’t see you doing any endorsements?”

“I patented the PGR chips.”

“Really? How come no one knows that?”

“My name’s on the patent so it isn’t hidden. But, at my request, PGR plays it down so people just don’t seem to realize it. When they figure that out, they don’t seem to realize how much it’s worth.”

Shan frowned, “They don’t charge all that much for those chips.”

“But they sell a lot of them. They aren’t just connecting your AI to your HUD you know. They connect almost everything that moves data over any distance.” She shrugged, “Our planet’s had a tremendous reduction in radio emissions over the past three years.”

Shan’s gaze drifted up to the ceiling, “Wait, so, I’ve got a new chip from my HUD to my AI, and one from my AI to the net…”

“And you probably have a PGR hub connecting all your screens to your AI and to the net.”

“And, if I get a new car, it’ll probably have a PGR connection.”

Ell snorted softly, “New cars have 20-100 PGRs. Why stretch data cables when chips are so reliable? Even counting the billions of very poor on the planet who don’t have any chips, PGR Comm has been selling an average of two PGRs for every person on this planet the past couple years.”

“Wait, if there’s 6-7 billion people on the planet… you’re saying they’re selling about 13 billion chips a year?”

She shrugged, “Close enough.”

“And they sell them for…?”

“6-7$ each, on average.”

“And you get?”

“12%”

Shan’s eyes went distant, then widened, “Ten billion dollars a year?”

She gave a tiny shrug, “Close enough for right now. That’ll drop off in a while when everyone starts to have as many PGRs as they need. They don’t break very often.” After a pause she said, “Or it might go up if a lot more uses are found for them.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

Ell gave a tiny headshake.

“Wait… and you own D5R? I guess you founded it with money from the chips?”

Ell nodded.

“No other stockholders?’

“Oh, sure. The employees own shares, 2% of D5R and almost 20% of some of D5R’s subsidiaries.”

“And ET Resources has got to be making money from that asteroid they’re mining.”

Ell nodded, “Since we’ve got waldoes out there running the ore gathering and crushing operation it’s become a lot more functional. It’s actually just begun to make money. But it’s a lot more money than I had expected.”

“And from those solar heating and cooling sources they have parked near the sun and out in deep space?”

Ell nodded again. “Not just heating and cooling. More and more electrical power generation is coming from hot solar tubes. A lot of the power plants near the coasts make steam from salt water, then ‘cool tube’ condense the steam into fresh water. They sell the water too.”

“And you’re getting revenue from those too?”

She shrugged, “Not a big percentage, but it adds up.”

“Oh, and the ports themselves. Does D5R have the patent on those too?”

“Well…”

Shan tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

“I guess,” she said with a sigh, “it’s my patent.”

“Oh my God. Are you… the wealthiest person in the world?”

“Oh, no!”

“Not yet?”

Ell shrugged, granting that it was only a matter of time.

Shan stared at her for a while then whispered, “So why are you hanging out with a schlep like me?”

Ell sniggered and moved closer to put her head on his shoulder and an arm around him. “‘Cause, I like my schleps smart.”

Shan leaned his head back to look down into her eyes, “No, really. Why aren’t you off cruising the world with the glitterati?”

She stuck out her lower lip, “Don’ wanna.” Then she gave him a serious look “Really… why would I do that? What I love best is figuring things out. Working out the math for the 5th dimension. Getting ports to work. Inventing new stuff. Using them to save the space station and stop a comet. I think it’s something like the way other people enjoy solving a crossword puzzle, though word puzzles aren’t my thing. But I don’t have any desire to do the kinds of things that most rich people seem to like to do. I would kind of like to travel around and see some of the world sometime though.” She glanced away, “What do you want to do with your life?”

Shan didn’t say anything for a moment, then snorted gently. “An hour ago, I would have said, ‘take care of you.’ But now I figure you could hire that done. Being your ‘kept’ man kinda sticks in my craw though.”

Quietly, Ell said, “I don’t want you to be my ‘kept man” either. I’m so proud of what you’ve done already. I truly hope you’re going to continue doing those kinds of things.”

His eyes widened, “What I’ve done?”

“Figuring out how 5D math applied to galactic distances and the dark matter-energy problem. Designing the software for John’s new hand.”

Shan laughed, “With the first, I didn’t even understand what I had… ‘til you explained it to me. The second—really any math and software jockey could have done.”

Ell shrugged her free shoulder, “The first, no one else but you even noticed, despite it being out there for years. As for the second, I agree a lot of programmers could have done it, given a lot of time. Not many could design such an elegant and effective interface or underlying program. Practically none of them could have done it so quickly. Really Shan, it was a work of art.”

Shan’s head sank back against the pillow, “Well, if the WWW wants to marry me, I’m certainly not turning it down.”

“WWW?”

“World’s wealthiest woman.”

Ell snorted, then turned serious, “Remember you’re marrying ‘not rich Raquel.’ Who’s planning on leading an ordinary life, and raising some ordinary kids, in an ordinary family, in that ordinary little house we’re buying.”

Shan stared at her for a bit then said in a husky voice, “Yeah, and I’m OK with that too… That’s what I signed on for and I’m happier than anyone in the world with that decision…” After a moment he shrugged, “I’ll talk to my Mom and Dad about how many people they want to invite to the wedding.”

***

Ell, Emma and Shan met at Ell’s house. Ell and Emma drove there from work. Shan had dropped by their new house to move in a few things and then snuck over through the tunnel. Querlak was asleep. Ell put a graph up on the screen, “Spectroscopic analysis of the little fragment Sigwald chipped off the rimwall shows almost pure carbon. I showed the results to an expert who said that the other elements are almost certainly just surface contaminants.”

Emma frowned, “But is it graphene?”

Ell shrugged, “Graphene or nanotubes or some other form of pure carbon that we haven’t discovered yet.”

Shan frowned, “Our people can’t tell its structure?”

“Not from spectroscopic analysis.”

“Why don’t you ask them to use something else?”

“To do that we’d have to bring a sample back here to earth.”

Shan frowned, “You haven’t done that yet?”

“Nothing from other life bearing worlds comes back to earth. We don’t want to import pathogens. We sterilize everything we send the other way to protect the sigmas.”

He shrugged, “Just sterilize things you bring back from there.”

“What if they have a pathogen that can survive our sterilization techniques?”

Shan’s eyes widened slightly but he said nothing.

“Have you asked Querlak what it’s made of?” Emma asked. They were communicating fairly well with the alien by now. The three of them were taking turns running Sigwald. Rotating who interfaced, let them keep up with the alien’s six hour sleeping, eleven hour waking cycle fairly well.

To their surprise they still hadn’t met any other sigmas. They were beginning to get the feeling that Querlak may be avoiding bringing Sigwald into contact with other members of her race. Querlak willingly answered questions when they could be communicated but sometimes they couldn’t understand the answers very well.

In response to Emma’s question Ell said, “Querlak says it’s made of the 6th element—carbon—just like the spectroscopy says.” Ell shrugged, “She says the carbon came from the first and fourth planets.”

“What’re those other planets like?”

“Well, remember we don’t have great ability to analyze them. Our rocket is following a ballistic orbit and there’s a limit to what we can tell by simple imaging over planetary distances. The first planet is a rocky world, bigger than Mars but smaller than Venus. It’s just a little closer to their sun than Venus but only has a wispy carbon dioxide atmosphere. The second planet is the sigmas’ home world. It’s quite a bit smaller than Earth. In fact, it’s only a little larger than Mars. It has a pretty dense oxy-nitro atmosphere, very similar to the ringworld’s though the ringworld has more oxygen and less CO2, I think because it has such an overabundance of plant life. The third planet is another small rocky world much like Mars, cold with very little atmosphere. The fourth planet is a gas giant. It’s more massive than Jupiter, though when gas giants get to be that heavy they start to shrink as their own gravity compresses them so it isn’t actually larger. Spectroscopy of its atmosphere shows it’s almost all hydrogen and helium so it’s not very clear where the carbon came from. Maybe it’s coming from one of the moons of the fourth planet?”

“Wait a minute,” Shan said, “what if that first planet used to have a substantial carbon dioxide atmosphere? Maybe they used that carbon to build the ringworld?”

Ell’s and Emma’s eyes widened. Emma said thoughtfully, “They’d love Venus then wouldn’t they?”

Ell said, “Yeah! I was surprised that the first world had so little atmosphere! I think we’ve been right to put Querlak off about how Sigwald got to their system!”

“She’s really been after me about how Sigwald got to Sigma Draconis when I’ve been talking to her.” Shan said, “How about during your shifts?”

Ell and Emma both nodded.

Emma said, “I’ve been noticing an odd phenomenon. Sometimes Querlak is stumped by a question, then shortly thereafter, she not only understands it but can answer it. It’s as if Querlak asks someone smarter, but I never see her communicating! Or, and this is even weirder… sometimes I get the feeling that Querlak’s intelligence fluctuates? Sometimes she seems, I don’t know… kinda dumb. Other times, brilliant. But how and why would that happen?

Shan mused, “You know… I think you’ve pegged it. I’ve had a weird feeling too, like sometimes I’m talking to someone different. But you’re right, it isn’t so much someone ‘different’ as someone smarter… or dimmer.”

Emma said, “Have either of you seen any useful tech that we can use here on earth?”

Ell shrugged, “I’m pretty sure they’re using double ended ports. Those harvesters we’ve watched go by don’t have room to store the grain they reap. They must port it somewhere. Maybe directly to their homeworld. Unless they’ve hidden them, they sure don’t have enough people on the ringworld to eat it all or even process it. Also it’s hard to imagine building the ring without ports to transport the material to the ringworld’s orbital location. If so it would fit with Shan’s thought about the atmosphere of the first planet. It’s a lot easier to move a gas through ports than a solid.”

Emma said, “I meant, tech we don’t have here.”

Ell looked a little embarrassed, “Yeah, I realized partway through that pontification that you wouldn’t care if they had ports. I guess what I was going for was that I don’t think they’ve figured out one ended ports or they’d be travelling to stars already. Obviously they really want that capability.”

Emma said, “Back to my question. I think they’re really, really good at making graphene and building stuff out of it. I drew a repeating hexagonal structure with ‘sixes’ at the corners to represent carbon. I showed it to Querlak, then pointed to the road. One of those things happened where she stared at it like she didn’t have a clue for a while, then suddenly looked excited like she understood and said, ‘yes, yes.’”

Shan said, “I haven’t seen any tech we don’t have except for the huge engineering project to build the ring. Admittedly, that’s an engineering project many orders of magnitude greater than anything we humans have ever accomplished. But I have a feeling that the human race is on the verge of being able to physically build a ring, even though I doubt we could muster the political and economic willpower to build it. The expense would be crushing!”

“So, either they’re a lot more cooperative than we are… or it had to be absolutely critical that they build it.” Ell said thoughtfully.

Emma and Shan nodded.

Getting up, Ell said, “Let’s be very careful not to even imply that one ended ports might exist, OK?”

Chapter Three

Allan said, “You have a call from Emma.”

Ell rolled over from where she’d been lying, pondering wedding plans next to the sleeping Shan. “I’ll take it,” she whispered, softly getting out of bed. “Emma, what’s up?” Ell padded into the next room.

“Goldy’s had another baby!”

“Oh! Allan, get me the feed!” She looked up at her HUD to see Goldy and Silver, her two winged friends from Tau Ceti—at least she thought of them as her friends—huddled around a floppy little teecee. They alternated nudging the baby with their lips and wrapping their necks around each other. Their previous two children bounced around excitedly in the background, occasionally taking off in the short bursts of flight that were all they’d managed so far. “Aw, man… that’s sweet. Do you think the baby’s OK? I mean, heck even after seeing the first two kids I’m not sure I’d know if it was healthy or deformed!”

“I think it’s fine,” Emma said, “I’ve seen them upset and they don’t look upset at all.”

“So,” Ell said with a chortle, “you know what the big question will be at our next Teecee group meeting don’t you?”

“Uhhh, no, what?”

“Is it a boy, or a girl?”

Emma snorted.

***

Querlak’s TS was running 32 individuals at present for a human IQ of about 135. Her clade, stressed by having so many sigmas in TS for long periods of time was beginning to complain that nothing good had come from the investment so far. The clade, being small, couldn’t afford to dedicate so many individuals to TS for this much time like some of the big clades that ran the world. On the other hand, if her clade made a breakthrough on some tech, especially how to get to the stars, they’d be able to expand and perhaps become a ruling clade.

Watching Sigwald slide down the road she wondered how many sigwalds were in his TS at present. At different times he responded very differently—almost like a completely different person—suggesting more or fewer or perhaps different individuals in his TS. But, he didn’t seem to understand Querlak’s drawings of ancestor-descendant trees forming a clade or of part of the clade forming a TS. Or perhaps he was just pretending to be obtuse?

He readily seemed to confirm that he came from another star, but couldn’t or wouldn’t point out which one. Interrogatives about how Sigwald got from his star to Querlak’s were met with the word they’d agreed indicated a lack of understanding. Sigwald had indicated interest in how graphene was formed and from looking at him—all boxed up in magnesium—he did seem to lack that technology, unless there was some other reason to cover oneself in metal.

Querlak had decided to take Sigwald to one of the carbon allotrope fabrication and repair shops there on the ring. It made harvesters and planters and repaired broken items. She hoped that seeing the fabrication techniques and having them explained would provide the good will for Sigwald to teach her how to travel between the stars.

However, Querlak greatly feared that once other sigmas saw Sigwald, word would get out and eventually Querlak’s clade would be pushed aside by one of the huge clades that could provide hundreds of members and a truly genius level IQ. Querlak hoped that the fabrication center would be working on an off schedule to Querlak’s clade so that they could enter the center during its down time. Several members of Querlak’s clade worked in fabrication so she should be able to explain the processes to some extent. If only they could show Sigwald the facility without any other sigmas seeing Sigwald…

She dropped her TS, saving her clade’s resources until she and Sigwald got to the facility.

***

Ell’s “Raquel” AI said, “You have a call from AJ Richards.”

Ell frowned, “Is that the AJ from skiing in Colorado?”

“Yes.”

Ell had liked AJ’s quiet nature, especially in contrast to his obnoxious ski buddy Jordan. “Put him on.” She switched to her Raquel accent, “Hey AJ, what’s going on?”

“A lot of things. First I wanted to apologize for… Jordan… and for the fact that I hang around with such a shallow jerk.”

Ell laughed, “Well, you should be embarrassed about that. Apology accepted. What’s number two?”

“Well, numbers two and three are related. I find myself thinking about Morgan all the time since that weekend. Does she have a boyfriend who just didn’t come on that ski trip?”

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t. But Jordan might have poisoned the waters for you with the Kinrais sisters.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that. That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m no fast talking lady charmer like Jordan. So I’m thinking that when I graduate I’d like to move to North Carolina and try to ‘run into her,’ far, far from Jordan.”

“Wow! That’s a serious commitment to a romantic goal!”

“Yeah, when I say it out loud, it sounds crazy to me too. But, I think about it all the time.”

“So what’s item number three?”

“Well, I’d need a job in North Carolina and I’d really love to work for D5R. I’m hoping you’ll be my inside connection. Would you know if they might have any use for a ‘wet behind the ears’ civil engineer? I can’t find them advertising any jobs, much less a civil engineer job.”

“Hah!” Ell laughed, “Well HR always says they ‘just want good people’ and they get most of them by word of mouth. There’s a philosophy at D5 that says if you’re smart and decent and they hire you, they’ll find something useful for you to do. They do need engineers. If you send me your résumé, I’ll get it to the HR people and put in a good word.”

“That’d be great!”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“I won’t. I’ll still be looking at other possibilities.”

“Good move, catch you later.”

A moment later Ell was studying AJ’s records. He looked pretty good ‘on paper’ with impressive grades and scores though Ell was well aware that some people who tested well didn’t actually do all that well in the real world. And, he’d as much as admitted he had to work hard for his grades, so he probably wasn’t a genius. However, the fact that he hadn’t brought his good scores up, either while in Colorado skiing or during his call, rubbed Ell the right way.

After a moment Ell said, “Nancy.” Trusting that her AI would hook her up to Nancy in human resources, she continued, “I have a résumé I’m forwarding you. Raquel met him and liked him. Check him out and if you don’t find anything odd, I’d like to hire him. I’m thinking that we might try him out by having him work with Carter to engineer better processes for collecting the ore from the asteroids. I think the waldoes are still spending too much ‘hands on’ time just to keep the mining going.”

Nancy chuckled, “He’s cute. You sure that his picture isn’t influencing your decision making process Dr. Donsaii?”

Ell sighed theatrically. “You have got to start calling me ‘Ell.’ And, no, I hadn’t noticed his looks at all. Let me look back at his picture. Hmm,” she sniffed, “I’ll grant you that he is somewhat attractive. That had no bearing on my recommendation though.”

Nancy chuckled, “Sure Bosslady. Of course... No doubt.”

***

Ryan looked up from working with John Parker to refine the control of his prosthetic hand. Most of the remaining issues were related to interpretation of sensory input regarding “position sense.” Those sensations were hard for John to describe. Programming the neurotrodes to deliver appropriate signals to the correct fibers of John’s sensory nerves that would give him proprioceptive perceptions like he had experienced from his real hand had been very difficult. Far more difficult than touch and heat and cold anyway. However, they were gradually understanding what type of signal they had to inject into the proprioceptive axons of the nerve for John to have a correct sensation of his hand’s position.

Ryan saw Ell Donsaii step out of the machine shop.

He got up and walked her way. “Ms. Donsaii…?”

“Mr. Keller?” She smiled, “Though I would hope that we would be on a first name basis by now?”

He looked abashed, “Ell.” He found it difficult to believe that he had a hard time calling her by her first name when he so desperately wanted to ask her out. “Um, I know you love Velos. I happen to have tickets to the show in Greensboro?”

She grinned at him, “I’m really flattered.”

Ryan’s heart thumped hard as she leaned closer to him. He noticed a fresh clean evergreen smell. Probably her shampoo he thought.

But then she dashed his hopes by saying quietly, “Sad to say I already have a boyfriend. I just go to great lengths to hide him away from my public life here.” She glanced aside, then back. “So much as I’d love to go to the Velos concert, you should take someone else with that extra ticket.” She grinned at him again and raised an eyebrow, “By the way, Bridget likes Velos.” Ell poked him gently in the chest, “And she thinks you’re really cute.” Ell winked and was gone before Ryan’s mind got back on track.

***

Emma rapped on the frame of Ell’s open door. “Hey, have you seen the latest tirade from Michael Fentis?”

Ell looked away from her screen, a bemused expression on her face. She slowly shook her head.

“This time no one trapped him or badgered him. An interviewer said something about him being the ‘world’s fastest man’ and he just went off. The interviewer hadn’t said anything about you or your run up to the vault, but apparently Fentis thought he had, or was about to, imply something about it. Anyway, Fentis exploded, saying that he’d had that video of you analyzed, that parts of it were fake and that it didn’t actually show you going very fast at all. Then he implied that you were the one that faked it.”

Ell tilted her head curiously, “Do you think he’s lost touch with reality?”

“You mean, ‘gone crazy?’”

Ell nodded.

“No, I think he’s completely sane, just a jerk. Well… and this thing about you is really irritating him.” Emma grinned, “He said if you could run even close to the speed claimed on that video, you would have entered a track meet a long time ago. He says that the fact you haven’t done so proves that you can’t, and that if you were a decent person you would just come out and admit it.”

Ell grinned crookedly, “Well, you’re right… he is kind of a jerk.”

Emma looked at her musingly for a moment, “Can you run that fast?”

Ell just shrugged. “Who knows? Never tried.”

***

Emma watched in growing excitement as Querlak landed in front of a large building. Finally an end to the interminable fields of crops! Her AI said, “Shan is contacting you. He’s ready to take over for his shift with Sigwald.”

“Connect me to him… Shan! Querlak’s taking us to a building! We’re just about to enter. I’m turning over control to you, but I’m going to stay to watch a few minutes. I’ve been bored senseless and I’m not leaving just as something finally happens.”

“OK…” Shan said. “Looks like the building is made out of the same stuff as the road. Do you think they make everything out of carbon? Is it all graphene?”

“No, graphene’s too flexible to hold up a wall. It’s incredible in tension but in compression it’d just fold. It’d be like trying to build a house out of nylon cloth.”

Querlak looked a little tentative as she entered the building. She looked around a moment, then waved Sigwald forward almost furtively. Emma had the feeling they were doing something illicit.

To Shan and Emma’s astonishment the huge building, though filled with equipment, had not a single sigma, other than Querlak, in it. Querlak led them into the building, at first looking about as if she were curious herself. Then another of those transformations rolled over her, changing her from a somewhat confused and dull appearance, to sharp and confident.

Emma wondered why she had that feeling of a change in Querlak. There wasn’t any way she could truly be comprehending Querlak’s body language.

Querlak stopped in front of a large machine and began pointing out its features in the pidgin English-sigma that they had been speaking. She opened the front of it like she worked with it all the time. From the look of the seals at the opening it appeared as if the inside was pressure tight. Inside were nozzles of varying sizes hanging on arms over a long bed.

When Shan tried to ask how it worked. Querlak closed the door and turned, looking about. She led Sigwald across to a different, much smaller machine. She worked with it a bit, evidently powering it up. She closed the door which proved to be transparent. Sigwald’s sensors registered the machine heating, then the bed at the bottom took on a red glow. They could see motion through the door. A broad nozzle passed back and forth laying down a spray of hazy material. After a couple of passes a bright beam began playing over much of the surface. Sigwald’s cameras registered it as coherent light, probably from a laser. The pattern rapidly changed and a different color beam began tracing a finer pattern on the surface. Excitedly Shan realized that the machine seemed to be working something like a 3D printer. He turned Sigwald toward Querlak, intending to draw some molecules in the dust again. However, there wasn’t much dust. Then he realized that they were in dim enough light to project a picture with Sigwald’s laser. He drew Querlak’s attention to the dark side of the machine and, signaling an interrogative, Shan had Allan use Sigwald’s laser to project graphene’s chickenwire hexagons with sixes at the nodes to indicate carbon.

For a moment Querlak seemed startled by the projection, then giving an impression as if she’d shrugged, she walked off, looking around as if trying to find something. She came back with a disk that had one side lit up. She inserted a small flat square in the side of it and scrolled through pictures until she came to one diagramming a layer something like the one the machine appeared to be making. Off to the side of the layer was diagrammed a molecule that had boxed sixes at the nodes. Not chicken wire hexagons though. Instead of three lines emanating from each carbon like in graphene, each carbon had four lines tetrahedrally emanating from it. Emma gasped, “Is that diamond?”

They heard the voice of Allan, Ell’s AI speak. “I’ve been monitoring. That isn’t quite diamond’s structure. It’s lonsdaleite. They look very similar.”

Ell’s voice appeared in their conversation as she said, “Allan told me something was happening. Is this some kind of fabrication machine?”

“We think so. Why would it be making lonsda… whatever?”

“Well the first layer it lays down would be the outside eventually. So probably they want a hard outer coating.”

“If they want it hard and can make a tetrahedral carbon, why not diamond? It would be a lot harder.”

“Actually no,” Allan said. “Pure lonsdaleite should theoretically be about 15 on the Mohs hardness scale while diamond is only 10. Unfortunately, all the lonsdaleite we’ve found or created so far on earth has a lot of impurities and flaws that weaken it.”

“What?!” Shan said. “I thought the top end of the Mohs hardness scale was set at 10 based on the fact that diamond was the hardest material?”

“It was when the scale was established.”

“Holy crap!” Shan whispered.

Querlak’s disk now showed a different structural layer. This layer had a diagram beside it showing layers of the chickenwire pattern of graphene. Querlak pointed to it and said in pidgin English, “like graphene… but layers bonded… we say…” At this point Querlak uttered one of the tones that served the sigmas for words.

Allan said, “That tone has many of the same harmonics that their tone for graphene does but a few tones from their word for diamond. I suggest we call it graphend.”

Shan said, “That looks just like graphene to me?”

Emma said musingly, “No, look. Some of the hexagon corners have a tetrahedral diamond type bond to the carbons in the graphene layer above or below them. That would keep the graphene layers from sliding past one another. It wouldn’t have quite the same tensile strength that graphene does but, because the layers won’t slide past one another, a thick stack of them would resist bending. You could use it for structures that need bending strength, not just tensile strength.” She looked around at the building, “Maybe the walls of this building and of the machines are made of it?”

Querlak’s disk indicated a different material being laid down like a trough in the ongoing layer deposition. With time, the trough became a pipe designated with more tetrahedral molecules. The material inside the little pipe that was being formed was designated with the hexagonal pattern of graphene. Shan asked, “Is that more lonsdaleite?”

“No, the tubular structure is diamond,” Allan said.

“Why diamond in the middle of this machine?”

“Diamond’s an insulator and properly oriented graphene’s an excellent conductor,” Ell said musingly.

“Oh my God!” Shan said wonderingly. “They’re laying down, layer by layer, a machine that has an incredibly hard lonsdaleite outer shell to protect it. Then a layer of graphend, similar to the strongest stuff we know of, made a little weaker in the process of giving it some bending strength. And then, instead of installing wiring inside of cavities in the machine, it has diamond insulator built right around graphene conductors!?”

“It’s a single element 3D printer! Most of our 3D printers only build things out of one or a few materials, mostly plastics that aren’t all that strong and really can only be used as models. When we need different material properties, we use completely separate machines to print parts from each different material and then have to assemble them. This thing only uses one material, carbon, but it’s using the different allotropes of carbon to make parts with different properties as it goes along. It’s making entire machines out of practically indestructible materials with electrical circuits built right into them. If they have to put any non-carbon parts into this thing when it’s done, I’ll bet it only needs a few!”

“What’s it making?”

“Who cares?” Emma laughed, “It isn’t what it’s making, but how it’s making it that’s important.”

Ell snorted, “Well, I’m still a little curious as to what it’s making.”

Shan turned Sigwald toward Querlak to ask what the machine was making, but then they heard a rapid burst of the sigma language that they’d been trying to learn. Querlak turned away from Sigwald. Turning Sigwald to look that way they saw that another sigma that had entered the building behind them.

Sigwald’s manipulators and wings looked droopy. Even though they didn’t understand sigma body language, they were pretty sure Querlak was not happy to see the stranger.

Querlak was in fact, horrified.

“What are you doing here?” the stranger had barked.

For a moment Querlak hoped that Sigwald would remain motionless and that the stranger wouldn’t notice him. But as she faced the stranger she saw Sigwald’s head turning toward the new sigma. Diffidently, Querlak indicated the small constructor, “Making a small transporter.”

“You aren’t part of the local build-repair group! Who gave you permission to use our constructors? And what is that thing?” The stranger indicated Sigwald.

“I’m Querlak, one of the local surveyors. I discovered this alien,” Querlak waved an upper manipulator at Sigwald, “in the fields.” Querlak desperately hoped to claim Sigwald, and any new knowledge arising from him, as value added by her own clade. “I am taking him around the ringworld trying to win his goodwill. He has much to teach our people. As part of that effort to be friendly I am demonstrating the function of this small constructor to him.”

Querlak could see the stranger’s eye brighten as he expanded his TS and turned fully toward Sigwald. “Why haven’t I heard about any ‘aliens’?”

“I think this is the only one.”

In an exasperated tone the other said, “And why haven’t I heard about this singular alien? I am Keenar of the Delnitch clade, we would have known… unless you’ve been keeping it secret?!”

Querlak drooped further as despair flashed through her clade. Delnitch clade, one of the very largest, had tremendous resources and power. The chances that Querlak could keep Sigwald to her own clade had just about evaporated. If only Sigwald had already taught her something of value! “We haven’t learned much as yet. We’ve been working to learn his language and just begun learning a few things about him. It isn’t the time yet to tell the world.”

“You mean,” Keenar sneered, “that you were hoping to keep it secret a while longer until you had learned anything of importance for your own clade. Which clade do you belong to Querlak?” Keenar’s voice dripped disdain.

Querlak drew herself up, “I am of the Osnak clade… and we claim precedence on any discoveries made through this alien.”

Keenar blew air derisively through his spiracles. “Sure you do. What does it know that we don’t?”

Querlak blew a snort through her own spiracles, “For a start… how to travel between the stars. I thought you were working a TS?” Implying that a TS’d sigma wasn’t actually linked to its clade was an insult implying the clade lacked intelligence.

Keenar darted a look at Sigwald, evidently just now considering that the presence of an alien implied star travel. He turned a staring eye back to Querlak. “He’s told you how to travel to the stars?”

“Not yet.” Querlak tried to sound confident. “But he’s implied that if I teach him something, he’ll teach me something. I’m teaching him about how we manufacture with carbon.”

“Why is he covered in magnesium?”

Querlak had confirmed with Sigwald that his outer surface was made of the 12th element but still wasn’t sure whether the magnesium was a covering like a space suit or whether Sigwald was some kind of intelligent machine. She didn’t want to give up any precedence with Keenar however. Trying for Keenar’s sneering tone Querlak said, “Why don’t you ask him?”

Keenar snorted derisively, “You want me to learn his language before I can ask him any questions?”

“No!” Querlak said vehemently, “I want you to acknowledge Osnak’s precedence. I discovered him. I’ve been working for days to learn just a little of his language.”

Keenar turned his gaze back to Sigwald contemplatively. A moment passed. “Would Osnak clade like to join Delnitch clade?” he asked musingly.

A shiver burst over Querlak’s wings, her mouthparts suddenly dry. This was an offer that perhaps couldn’t be refused. She could feel excitement ringing through her TS and out into the clade. “Osnak doesn’t have a current mating permit,” she said slowly, trying not to pant from the emotions resonating around her clade. Some members were horrified at the thought of submerging themselves in Delnitch, others ecstatic over the opportunity. Their powerful emotions resounded in Querlak like thunder.

“That can be arranged,” Keenar said beginning to walk around Sigwald.

Querlak felt disgust at this open admission that mating permits could be obtained outside the regulations by the more powerful clades. Still, if Osnak joined such a mighty clade… Querlak shook herself, “It could not be you and I. We are here on the ringworld,” she said referring to their currently infertile state.

“Of course not. Delnitch has sent Ezan with a permit to the home of your Nonas. Nonas will breed her and we will be joined.”

Feeling as if she were in turbulent air Querlak said, “When will she be fertile?”

“She is fertile now.”

With a tremulous sigh Querlak said, “When they have mated, I will answer your questions.” It would only be days until a connection formed between Delnitch and Osnak through the fetus of Ezan and Nonas. At that point there would be no secrets between them anyway.

Having finished a circuit of Sigwald, Keenar said, “Tell it that I will examine it now.”

Querlak stepped between Keenar and Sigwald. “I will ask if you may examine it. I have worked for days to establish a friendly relationship. Your first act will not be to destroy that relationship.”

Keenar snorted, “If it doesn’t want to tell us what we want to know, we’ll make it tell us.”

“Spoken like a sigma from an overlarge clade. Your kind always thinks they can demand whatever they want. Then take it by force if refused! I remind you, this being traveled from another star to come here. You have no idea what power it may wield!”

Keenar stared at Sigwald as if considering the possibility. He swayed his lower manipulators in a shrug, “I know that it’s covered itself in magnesium… which seems stupid.”

“It’s strong and light.”

“Magnesium doesn’t hold a candle to carbon in either area. I think this alien is completely ignorant of carbon manufacturing processes. Now you’ve been giving that secret away for free.”

“I haven’t shown him how to make things. Only that it’s possible. We can trade the ‘how’ for information.” Querlak turned to Sigwald and pointed to Keenar, “Keenar,” she said meaningfully. Then she pointed to Sigwald, “Want look you.”

Sigwald said, “Want look Keenar.”

Time passed as Keenar and Sigwald took turns looking each other over carefully. Keenar turned to Querlak, “Why do you call it ‘him’?”

“He says he does not bear young from his body.”

“Is his clade back at his home star or here in Sigma system?”

“I haven’t been able to ask that question. We don’t have words for such a question yet. She swung her lower manipulators, “Maybe they don’t have clades?”

Keenar snorted a blast of air out his spiracles, “Come on! He’s here, across the stars from his home. How did he do that without a clade?”

Querlak swung her lower manipulators in another shrug. “He’s looking at the constructor again. I’m going to continue explaining the types of carbon that are being laid down.” She stepped over to Sigwald and lifted the training disk. The constructor was building a small servo motor for the little transporter. It had begun magnetizing thin layers of carbon by proton bombardment. Querlak scrolled through the microfilm to the pages showing graphene being bombarded with protons. She pointed to the protons and said, “Element, one.”

Sigwald’s head bobbed up and down. Querlak had observed this motion many times when Sigwald seemed to agree with something, so probably he understood.

Emma said, “Why would they be shooting hydrogen atoms at graphene?”

“I think when she drew hydrogen for us before it was that little box with a circle around it, not just the box. Is that right Allan?”

“Correct.”

“Maybe the circle represents the electron and the box the nucleus so these are only protons?”

“OK,” Emma said, “Why would they be shooting protons at graphene?”

Ell mused, “Proton bombardment makes some carbon allotropes magnetic.”

“Holy crap!” Shan hissed, “That structure’s round! I thought they’d at least have to drop a motor in this thing when they were done. Hell no! They’re going to make an electric motor out of carbon too! In-freaking-credible!”

Ell said, “Um, I think that bundle of coils being laid down back there was a much bigger motor. That motor isn’t using permanently magnetized carbon, instead it has coils for electromagnets on both the rotor and the stator.”

Emma’s eyes tracked over to the area with the coils of wires, “Damn! I think you’re right.”

***

Ell stepped into her security team’s gym at one in the morning. She’d dropped in on the ready team in their little lounge and told them she was going to use the gym and didn’t want to be disturbed. She had Allan take over the cameras in the gym so that no one could get a record of her practicing.

Over the next hour she drilled with the ports that she’d installed in her fingers. She practiced communicating sub-vocally with Allan so he could set the distance and load the correct items to be fired through her two-one ports without anyone hearing her. She squirted various practice liquids into rolled up towels from the ports in both fingers, unrolling the towels to check for wet spots indicating successful administration.

Then she tested the larger 15mm port she’d put in the subcutaneous fat just below her belly button. With that port she also could deliver some devices such as plastic cable ties, 12mm rope and graphene strands that were much stronger than the rope, even though their diameter was tiny. That port could also deliver a knife automatically. Of course if she contacted Amy she could ask her to put anything she wanted through the port, as long as it was less than 15mm in diameter. She could even have Amy roll a larger port up into a tube and put it through.

Once she was sure that all three ports and their delivery mechanisms were working correctly she practiced judging distances using an infrared laser rangefinder shot through the port. With the rangefinder data Allan could set the distance and she could squirt drugs into something at a distance. Of course, if the distance was large relative to the thickness of the person she was injecting, there would be an excellent chance she’d miss because of the plus or minus 10% distance accuracy. A one foot thick human, twenty feet away had a moderate chance of having the drug miss a few inches too short or too long.

Once she’d become comfortable with the injection mechanism, she had fun shooting inactive Taser darts into the various targets in the room. A ruby laser rangefinder through the port confirmed her aim and the distance. Then Allan could extend the port to a little short of the target so Ell could hardly miss. However, she quickly became proficient enough that she could reliably shoot darts or inject drugs into targets without having to check her aim with the laser. The tiny flashes that appeared where the port opened seemed barely noticeable.

It was fun, point a finger and bang, a dart was on its way.

By 2:30AM she felt comfortable with all three of the ports she’d installed in her body. She cleaned up the wet towels and dummy darts. Before she went to sleep, she dropped by her lab to restock the Taser guns with real darts and place active agents back in the injectors.

***

Carter said, “AJ, just relinquish control of your waldo to your AI. Ask the AI to return the waldo to its starting location. That’s something AIs are good at. The more you struggle to get it back in control yourself, the worse it’s going to get.” He waited a moment while AJ released control and the AI stopped the waldo’s tumble. “Now, do you know what happened?”

“Yeah,” AJ said, thankfully without the sullen tone that Carter had been afraid he might hear. “I forgot to take the attitude jets off line once I was in place. Then when my butt got tired and I shifted in my seat, the movement fired my jets and blew me out of place.” He snorted, “Then I made it worse by trying to control it myself instead of just asking my AI to fix it.”

“Someday you’ll be able to fly yourself back into place, but give yourself time. You probably feel like you’re terrible at this?”

“Yeah.” AJ mumbled.

“That’s ‘cause you are.” Carter laughed. “Very few people are naturals at this, but you actually aren’t doing any worse than most people in their first few days of it.”

“Are there any people who’re ‘naturals?’?”

“Oh Jeez, you should see Donsaii fly one. It’s like watching a ballet!”

“Really? I wouldn’t think she’d have the time to practice.”

“She doesn’t. Believe me she doesn’t need it.” Carter cleared his throat, “Back to you. They didn’t hire you to fly waldoes, though I think you need to do some of it so you understand the issues. They hired you to look at the harvesting processes out here on this asteroid through your engineering skillset. Then see what you can do to improve our harvesting.”

“I’m afraid you guys may be overestimating my ‘engineering skillset,’ remember I just graduated and have no experience to speak of. I stopped at an ore processing facility in Minnesota on my way out here and got a friend to take me on some tours. What impressed me was how every step of the processing depended on gravity. From the ore falling into the crusher, to crushed ore falling through screens to separate sizes, to ‘gravity concentration according to specific gravity. I know we’re really only trying to crush it into sizes we can send it through without using huge ports but there isn’t much out there in the engineering books on how to do this without gravity.”

Carter laughed, “I know, believe me, I know. This magnetic system we’re using is working pretty well but I keep feeling like there’s got to be a simpler way. I think I’m just too focused to see it. Your job is to think about it… outside the box if possible.” He pointed his waldo’s finger at AJ’s waldo, “Meantime, keep working a couple shifts a week in a waldo and getting a feel for what the problems and what the tools are. Donsaii’s a believer in everyone getting their hand dirty.”

***

Vanessa’s AI spoke in her ear. “Ms. Ell Donsaii is returning your call.”

Vanessa put up her hand to halt the gymnast that she had been about to spot on vault. She turned to the side, “Yes. Ms. Donsaii?”

“Hi. How can I help Team USA?”

Wanting some privacy, Vanessa headed for the door to the coaches’ offices just off the gym. “Um, we’re hoping we can talk you into entering the Olympics again this summer.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just not willing to make the time commitment that it would require.”

“Natya Kolmenya told me that you’ve repeatedly refused her offers to join the team. But she suggested that perhaps if I offered to let you just show up to compete in Delhi, you might be willing.”

“Just show up at the Olympic venue and compete? No practices?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“No other time commitments?”

“Well, we would like you to show up at least one day before the competition to work out on the actual venue equipment. We would want to be sure you can actually still do your routines before we bumped one of the other team members to let you perform.” She cleared her throat, “Of course we’ve seen the vids of you dancing in which you’ve included some of your astonishing floor exercise elements, so we know you can do those. We just don’t know if you’ve kept up on the bars, beam or vault?”

“I’ll give it some thought,” Donsaii said, without responding to the implied question about her other skills. Vanessa tried to ask more questions but Donsaii had already disconnected.

Vanessa slammed into Natya’s office. “You’re not going to believe this!” she exclaimed excitedly.

***

Querlak found herself excited but frustrated. She had been working hard to trade knowledge with Sigwald. Sigwald’s fascination with carbon allotrope construction became more and more obvious. He made no bones about his tremendous desire to know what conditions had to be induced in the constructor’s chamber to cause formation of graphene in one location, graphend in another, diamond in a third and lonsdaleite in a fourth. The methods used to dope some allotropes with other elements or bombard them with protons to induce magnetism fascinated him. Querlak had trickled out a few tantalizing specifics and tried to make it obvious that more were available—if only Sigwald would explain how he passed between the stars.

Sigwald’s responses to her entreaties ranged from indicating that he didn’t understand the question, to suggesting that he came through a port. To questions about how the local end of a port pair would have been transported to this star she got nothing but a blank stare.

Sigwald, however, did teach them about a new technology. He described making “transistors” which his people apparently made with semiconductors of silicone and germanium rather than doped graphene semiconductors. Why they used silicone wasn’t very clear. At first it wasn’t clear why he was describing them. They certainly weren’t new or exciting, the sigmas frequently used transistors to amplify signals. But then Sigwald diagrammed combining many transistors on something he called a “chip.” It wasn’t clear why he would want to put many of transistors on a chip but then the image kept drawing back until it became obvious that there were thousands or millions of the transistors on a tiny object. Like microfilm could put thousands of pictures on a tiny piece of film Sigwald’s people evidently could put thousands of transistors on one small chip.

Then Sigwald showed how a group of transistors could work a math problem. And how a larger group could work a larger math problem.

Querlak wondered why one wouldn’t just connect up a large enough TS to do such a calculation in one’s head. Keenar however became excited when Sigwald showed an image of a small machine that could do very large calculations very quickly. Turning to Querlak he said, “The engineers that designed the ringworld repeatedly had to form enormous transcendental states to compute the stresses for their designs. Sometimes they even had to use one of the math clades just to perform those tremendous calculations for them! Imagine if you had a simple machine like this that could do large calculations for a small engineering TS! Engineering could be done with far fewer people and by smaller clades!”

Querlak swung her lower manipulators, “We don’t have a shortage of people.”

Keenar seemed to consider this a moment. Then he slowly and contemplatively said, “I think if we had machines that could do such calculations… that we would find more and more uses for them. From one of the things Sigwald showed me I think they send messages consisting of large numbers within which they use calculation to encode data. Then they use reverse calculation to decode the data at the other end.”

“But we can send information from one location to another using a wire passed through a port.”

“Audio and video.”

“We can send that over the same wire.”

Keenar’s eye swung to fix on Querlak, “I think they can send much more information, much faster with this ‘digital encoding.’”

Querlak tilted her eye curiously, still not sure that fast encoding would provide that much benefit, but glad that Keenar seemed mollified.

Keenar said, “You know how everything Sigwald says in our language sounds like he’s exactly copying something you’ve said to him? He sounds exactly like you, though the words are chopped up wrong?”

Querlak bobbed her eye in agreement.

“I think he’s just recorded your words with that ‘digital encoding.’ Then I think he brings your words back from where he’s recorded them by de-coding them.”

Querlak swung her manipulators, “We can record words.”

“But, we can’t bring them back one at a time in a different order like Sigwald does. Well, we could, but it would take a long time.” Keenar had a somewhat distant look as he mused on this but then he returned to his primary focus. He snarled, “This ‘digital technology’ is interesting, but it’s just distracting us from the fact that what we really need to know is how Sigwald got here and where he came from!” He got another distant look as his TS considered, then said, “What our race needs is a place to expand, not a better way to do calculations or communicate.” He turned, “We’ll be able to form a TS soon and I’ll be able to speak to Sigwald directly, then we’ll see what’s what.”

Querlak felt apprehensive about the TS that would merge Osnak into Delnitch. Occasionally a smaller clade dominated a larger clade when they merged… but Delnitch was huge. Obviously Keenar expected to be the senior partner once the fetus of Ezan and Nonas matured enough that its 5th dimensional connections to its mother and father joined the two clades. Keenar expected to use what Querlak had learned of Sigwald’s language without learning it himself. Since Querlak’s brain would be the main repository of that knowledge Querlak would likely find herself a minor but almost constant partner in that Delnitch TS.

She didn’t think she was going to like it. She blew air through her spiracles and turned back to Sigwald. She tried to generate more good will by attempting to further clarify to Sigwald the pressure-temperature and charge conditions inside the constructor that were necessary when it rapidly formed diamond.

Perhaps if she could get Sigwald to tell Osnak clade something of importance they could abort the connection to Delnitch?

Chapter Four

It was 6:30 in the morning when Shan stepped into Ell’s spare bedroom and said, “What’s up with the sigmas?”

Ell said, “Querlak, please wait.” She paused a moment, then said, “Allan, pause waldo function.” She pulled her hands out of the waldo gloves and pulled off the head set. She lifted her feet out of the toe clips and leapt off the saddle into Shan’s arms. “Hey there good lookin’,” she grinned up at him.

Smiling down at her Shan said, “Hey yourself. I wonder what Querlak thinks when Sigwald goes motionless like this?”

“I don’t know what she thinks. I think I’m desperately in need of a kiss.”

Shan grinned, “There you go, thinkin’ only of yourself.” He leaned down for that kiss.

A minute or so later they broke apart and Shan waggled his eyebrows, “Oooohh, that was good for me too. Maybe Querlak could wait a bit longer?”

Ell said, “Nope, Keenar’s gone for the moment so we need to get back to business. Querlak’s been able to define a lot of the pressure and temperature conditions of the plasma in their additive carbon manufacturing for me. At first I thought some of the pressure figures were in error due to translation problems. A lot of the pressures are very low. Actually, they’d qualify as vacuum. But, some are unbelievably high. However, I’ve reconfirmed them every way I can think of. After a bit I realized that the chambers were made of lonsdaleite, diamond, graphend and graphene. I ‘accidentally’ banged the side of the constructor with Sigwald’s hand and, as expected, it damaged his hand but didn’t leave a mark on the constructor. They probably can achieve those pressures inside chambers made out of their carbon materials. From some of the diagrams Querlak’s shown me, I’m pretty sure they use infrared lasers to jump the temperatures in areas where they want certain allotropes. I’m also getting the impression they use a squirt of ionized carbon to convert from one allotrope to another in specific areas.” She shrugged, “We’re a long way from going out and building something that’ll do what their little box will do.” She raised eyebrows over a grin, “But, just knowing that it can be done and approximately what conditions are correct will move us along a lot.”

Shan got into the saddle of the waldo controller. “How about our friend Keenar?” he asked putting his toes in the clips.”

“Still acting like a total jerk. I mean we only get a few words because he talks so fast and Querlak almost always has to translate. And of course, I shouldn’t claim to understand their body language, but despite my cognitive comprehension that I really don’t know what’s going on, it still comes down to… I can’t stand the SOB.”

Shan snorted and pulled on the goggles, “Well I’m glad to have such a rational thought process laid out for me. I didn’t know they had female dogs out at Sigma Draconis.”

Ell stood admiring Shan’s lanky, ropy muscularity as he pulled on the waldo gloves. She brushed her hand over his arm, “Thanks for running Sigwald this morning. I’ll take him back over using the controller at D5R as soon as my meeting is done.”

“Umhmm,” he murmured, “No big rush, I don’t teach my class ‘til 10.”

Ell smiled at him a moment longer. Shan really liked teaching math, though he tried to make it out to be a pain. She turned and headed down to her car.

Shan looked around through Sigwald’s eyes. Querlak stood patiently waiting, staring into the distance. When Shan switched on the waldo connection and Sigwald moved again Querlak turned her focus back onto him. He saw Keenar approaching a little ways in the background.

“You… well, Sigwald?” Querlak asked.

“Yes, just a moment’s rest.” Shan said, wondering how many of his words Allan was able to translate correctly. “Allan what were you able to say as a translation for that?”

“‘Yes, sleep little.’” Allan said, “I don’t have words for ‘moment’ or ‘rest.’”

Keenar arrived and brusquely pushed Querlak aside, rapidly speaking the sigmas’ language. Allan translated, “Doesn’t… matter… what is… important… stars.” Keenar stopped speaking and moved his eye very close to Sigwald. It felt somewhat threatening to have him so close. Like he was in Shan’s personal space, even though he was actually nineteen light years away.

Behind Keenar, Querlak said in her own version of English, “Keenar want know, how go, stars. Say, very important.”

Shan pondered a moment, then said, “Allan, tell them Sigwald was sent to Sigma Draconis by others and doesn’t know how it was done. He cannot teach that. He would be happy to continue trying to teach them about computers in exchange for more information about carbon manufacturing.”

Allan said, “I’m saying, ‘Others make go Sigwald to Sigma. Sigwald not know how. Cannot tell how. Can say more of thinking machine if you say more of carbon making?’”

Querlak bobbed her eye up and down and said, “Yes…” Then turned and spoke rapidly to Keenar.

Keenar shoved Querlak violently aside and stepped very close, putting his eye inches from Sigwald’s right eye and spouting his own language.

Allan translated, “You… say… stars.”

Shan stared a moment and thought about giving Keenar a shove himself. Since Sigwald was strong enough to walk around in a full earth gravity, he should be immensely powerful compared to the sigmas. Taking a deep breath he let it out. No need to get in a fight. We desperately want knowledge—so other sigmas probably do too. And there’s a lot more ringworld to look at. Bound to be friendlier sigmas to talk to somewhere. He said, “Allan, hover please. Then back us away from Keenar, turn us around and head back onto the road toward the circle sea.”

Keenar’s eye widened when air began hissing out from under Sigwald’s feet. A jet of air struck him in the mouthparts as it pushed Sigwald back away from him in a skidding fashion. Keenar had only seen Sigwald walk in his ungainly clomping fashion on those two excessively thick lower extremities. When Sigwald spun and began to slide more and more rapidly away down the roadway, he turned to Querlak. “How is he moving?! I haven’t seen that before.”

Querlak drew herself up, “I told you he moved by sliding on his feet.”

“I thought you meant sliding them one past the other to walk like he has been doing! When will he be back?!”

Querlak swung her lower manipulators in an exaggerated shrug. “I think you made him angry. Maybe he won’t come back. You sigmas from the big clades all think you can just demand something and it will happen, but it makes other people angry.”

“You’ll be part of a ‘huge clade’ soon enough,” Keenar said darkly. “Let’s go after him.” He lifted into the air with a couple of violent wing beats and started down the road behind Sigwald.

Querlak thought of refusing, but Keenar was right. Soon enough she would be part of his clade. She blew a long sigh out her spiracles, letting her TS go, then lifted into the air. After all it didn’t require a TS to fly after Keenar.

***

Gary knocked on Ell’s door frame, a little worried about why he might have been called in to see the boss first thing in the morning. In her office no less. Ell almost always met with people wherever they were working rather than calling them to her office.

Ell looked up and said, “Hey Gar’, close the door and have a seat.”

Gary swallowed as he did what she asked. He knew Ell’s famous open door policy wouldn’t be violated lightly. What could be wrong? He absolutely loved working here and the progress that her company’s investment had allowed him to make on graphene synthesis had been nothing short of astounding. The graphene spinner he’d installed in D5R’s space habitat might just as well be printing money. There was so much demand for product that the prices just kept rising. He currently had four more spinners in construction and had been wanting to talk to Ell to see if the D5R board would consider adding another weightless module to the habitat just for spinning.

She said, “I’m wanting to talk to you about something that I don’t want anyone else to know, would you mind disconnecting your AI?”

Fingers almost trembling, Gary pulled off his headset and popped out its PGR chip to disconnect it from his AI.

Ell steepled her fingers and looked at him as if trying to decide how to say something important. Gary’s heart sank further as he tried to think what he had done wrong. Ell said, “You’re getting pretty good at making graphene.”

Gary nodded, desperately wondering where this could be going.

Ell looked distantly up toward the ceiling then looked back at him. She quietly said, “How would you feel if someone gave you some hints on high speed carbon macromolecule assembly?”

Gary felt goosebumps, “You mean, an even better way to make graphene?!” He had mixed feelings, first that it would be wonderful to be able to make it faster or better in some fashion. But he also felt disheartened that someone else had figured it out instead of himself.

Ell’s eyes came back to him as she nodded, “And other carbon allotropes.”

“Diamond?!” Gary whispered.

She nodded, “And lonsdaleite. Proton bombarded magnetic carbon. Graphene with some bonding between layers. Doped graphene.”

Gary felt lightheaded. Lonsdaleite! Magnetic carbon! Weakly he said, “You’ve already figured out how to do these things?”

Ell shook her head, “No, but I have some ballpark methods and I’m working on a theory that I think will let us calculate precise conditions. To flesh out the theory I need experimental data from approximations of those conditions.”

“If you already know how to do this… why are you talking to me?”

“Let’s just say I know it can be done… and I have a good but not exact idea what the conditions would be for some of the different allotropes. However, I’m not a carbon macromolecule expert like you. I need someone who can help me understand why those conditions work and whether my theory on how they work has holes in it or not. If my theory is in fact predictive, it should let us make what we want, where we want it.”

“So, you want to form a team to work on it?”

Ell shrugged, “Kinda. What I envision is that I tell you the approximate conditions and you test around them, as well as some other ‘non-forming’ conditions that would check my theory. You provide me results from your tests so I can work on my theory.”

“And if we get it to work? I mean so we can synthesize, say lonsdaleite? Do we form a company to make it?”

“Gary,” Ell leaned forward and focused a serious eye on him, “Take it as a given that it does work. What we need to do is refine and understand the process. Then you patent it, assigning rights to D5R and we decide whether we license the processes to make it, or make stuff ourselves.”

“Stuff? You mean lonsdaleite? We can make graphene right now and I assume you know that people have been synthesizing diamond for a long time.”

Ell tilted her head, “Gary, you’re thinking small. Imagine you want the world’s best sword. What if I told you I could make you one out of diamond in a couple of hours?”

“Well,” he said, drawing the word out. “That would make an amazing display item. But it would break too easily to actually be a good sword.”

“Now suppose I told you I could lay it down in layers of diamond alternating with layers of graphene. So we’d have a composite laminated material with the graphene supplying tensile strength of over 120 gigapascals and the diamond supplying compressive strength of over 230 gigapascals. Then we coat the outer surface and cutting edge with lonsdaleite having a Mohs hardness of 15.”

“Holy crap!” Gary breathed. “That would be the ultimate sword. If you could swing it hard enough you could cut right through a steel sword.” He glanced up at her, “You know most steels’ strengths are only about one to two gigapascals?”

“I’m sure you can imagine that such a sword wouldn’t actually see much use, no matter how awesome it would be. But, how about knife that never gets dull, lenses that never scratch, a car you couldn’t dent. Or buildings made with such structural materials, think they might last for quite a while?”

Gary sank back in his chair, a dazed look in his eyes. “I doubt knives, cars or buildings would be the first things we made. Our current cars work pretty well. There are too many other things that are pushing the edge of our current mechanical performance envelope that we’d want to make first.”

“I’m pretty sure that limitless uses would be found once we developed the technology.”

Gary’s eyes refocused on Ell and he sat up. “How do you know about these ‘conditions’? You’re telling that you ‘have a theory’ that needs to be tested, but that I should, ‘take it as a given that it does work’ as if you’ve seen it work? If you’ve seen it work, why do you need for me to test it?”

“Gar’, this whole thing is very complex but it all comes down to… I don’t want to tell you or anyone else how I know that this works. Nonetheless, I can guarantee that it does work.” She stared intently at him, “I want you to ‘discover,’” she held her fingers up to make little air quotes, “these principles so we can attribute the invention to you. The ‘theory’ explaining how it works can be mine, if the theory pans out. You’ll share in the financial proceeds according to the file I just sent you. The deal isn’t a lot different from the one you already have with us for your graphene, just a little more weighted in D5R’s favor.”

Gary swallowed. “So you’re going to send me a file with these ‘conditions’ you want me to try?”

Ell grinned, “Nope. I’m going to tell you some conditions that you’re going to try. You can write them down if you want but they should be in your handwriting. You can attribute them to a half-baked ‘theory’ of mine if you want. But I don’t want there to be any record of me giving you any settings.”

His eyes widened, “Gosh, you sound a little paranoid.” He grinned, “You didn’t steal this from someone else did you? Someone who might come after me when I try to use it?”

“Nope,” she snorted, “nobody’s going to come after you. Let me give you some numbers…”

***

Ell climbed on the saddle of her waldo controller at D5R and put on the gear. “Allan, give me video from Sigwald and let me talk to Shan… Hey Mr. Fiancé, how’s it been going with Querlak?” Her eyes narrowed as the video came on and she realized that they weren’t at the site where they’d been watching the constructor. Instead Sigwald was zooming down one of the ring-crossing roads toward the circle sea.

Shan’s voice came over the connection, “Keenar got confrontational and demanded we tell him how to get to the stars. I thought about poking him in the nose, but instead I backed away and left. I figured we want what they know about carbon, but they want what we know pretty badly too. I decided that just taking off would show them that we weren’t selling that particular bit of info. If you want to talk to them some more we can slow down and let them catch up. They’ve been following. Or if you’re as sick of Keenar as I am, we could go even faster. Leave them in the dust and find a friendlier sigma to talk to.”

Ell snickered, “‘Poking him in the nose?’ My sweet Shan, instigator of the first interstellar incident?!”

“Hah, you wait, I’ll bet that if we keep hanging around those two, Keenar takes a poke at Sigwald pretty soon.”

“I’m not taking that bet. You’d better head to your class. I’ll slow Sigwald down and see if their attitude has changed.”

Once Shan relinquished control, Ell slowed Sigwald’s pace while rapidly reviewing Shan’s interactions with the two sigmas. Then she slowed Sigwald further and came to a stop, turning back to face the direction Sigwald came from. She could see the two sigmas approaching, Keenar in front. She waited as they settled in to land.

Querlak had a sick feeling about how things were going with Sigwald. She recognized that a large part of her unease related to her clade’s quick acceptance of a union with Delnitch clade combined with her strong dislike of Keenar. Usually a union with another clade was considered at length because reproduction permits were so precious. But Osnak had been seduced by a free permit and the prestige of a large, powerful clade like Delnitch. Though a many in Osnak had been apprehensive, a majority had favored the union so it had been approved—Querlak thought far too quickly. It was a union that Querlak thought they were going to regret. She felt sure she was going to hate being in a TS with Keenar…

Keenar dropped to a landing rudely close to Sigwald. Querlak alighted behind and to the right of him. Keenar said with a disdainful tone, “Are you tired?”

Sigwald’s head rotated side to side like he did when signifying the negative. He said only, “No.”

Querlak got the feeling that Sigwald didn’t get tired. That maybe he was a machine.

Keenar asked in a peremptory tone, “Are you ready to tell us how you travel between the stars?”

Sigwald’s head rotated again. “No. Cannot say that,” he said in his pidgin sigman speech using Querlak’s voice as he always did. Then he rotated his entire body toward Querlak and slightly away from Keenar. “I prefer speaking of knowledge with Querlak. Can we speak without Keenar?”

“No!” Keenar shouted stepping between Sigwald and Querlak. “Tell me how you got here or the full strength of Delnitch clade will be brought to bear. You will regret it if that becomes necessary.”

“Clade?” Sigwald moved and again turned to Querlak. He said in sigman. “What is ‘clade’?”

Using her English so that Keenar would have difficulty following Querlak said, “Your mothers and fathers and children. Those who make connections.”

“Connections?”

“Yes those that not need to speak with we.”

Ell’s eyes flashed wide inside the waldo goggles. Those that don’t need to speak…! What could that mean? Aloud she said, “Don’t need speak?”

Querlak bobbed her head. “Yes, because have connection in dimension five.”

“In dimension five?” Ell said slowly.

“Yes, like ports. Make think better. You comprehend?”

“Yes,” Ell whispered, desperately trying to come to grips with the concept. When they’d first seen the Teecees on Tau Ceti Dr. Norris had jokingly proposed that the Teecees might communicate via PGR with a queen creature that entangled all her offspring as they were born. Norris had meant it as a joke but… could something like that actually be present in the Sigmas? Some kind of naturally formed quantum entangled molecules in their brains? And could Querlak mean that combining minds through such a connection allowed them to think better? Raised their intelligence?

The very possibility made Ell’s hair stand on end. Querlak had been learning English at an astonishing rate without the use of any AI assistance that Ell could see. Ell had Allan to remember words for her and reproduce them when Ell spoke, but Querlak seemed to be doing it biologically. In fact, the sigmas didn’t seem to understand computing, nor to have any great desire for such technology. Ell had been thinking that they just didn’t understand what a computer could do. Now she wondered if several sigmas, as a group, could function like a biological computer? Just how smart are they? Or could they be? Don’t they need computers to prop up their thinking like we humans do? Is this why sometimes she seems smarter than at others? Because sometimes she’s connected to other sigmans?

Suddenly Keenar shouted in his pidgin English, “Speak, us, stars!” He stepped toward Sigwald, turned slightly and kicked the waldo in the head with one of his front feet.

Since the waldo’s head didn’t have sensors or the ability to transmit motion to Ell’s head she didn’t feel anything though her vision jerked a little. It was hard to read the sigman’s expression but she would have sworn Keenar looked surprised. Since Keenar was a flying animal Ell thought he must be much more lightly built than Sigwald who was made of metal and structured for a full earth gravity. Likely Keenar was surprised at how little effect the kick had produced.  Perhaps, kicking Sigwald’s hard magnesium structure had hurt as well?

For a moment Ell wondered what Keenar would do next. After a brief pause he began kicking Sigwald repeatedly, still having little effect. She thought about hitting him back, but doubted it would get them anywhere. Instead she backed away and started Sigwald down the road again. This time she boosted his speed up to about 250 kilometers per hour, thinking it unlikely that the sigmas could fly that fast. A glance back over Sigwald’s shoulder showed them fading back into the distance.

For a moment she wondered if they would get a car or plane or some other device to allow them to pursue her. Probably by the time they got it Sigwald would be far enough away to be lost in this bland environment. However, they may have access to a sensor system that could find her. She had Sigwald glance up at the cables that ran from one side of the ring to the other like bicycle spokes. If the sigmas had some kind of video viewing apparatus mounted up there on the cables, they might be able to use it to follow Sigwald. On the other hand, without computerized video storage and image analysis they might not be able to sort through whatever data they had.

Ell wondered if she should slow Sigwald down again and let them catch up, she liked Querlak. No, she decided, we’ll just check out more of the ringworld and meet some other sigmas. Maybe I’ll see Querlak again, maybe not.

“Allan,” she said to her AI as she got off the waldo controller, “Keep Sigwald going at this speed for an hour, then, if you’re sure Keenar is out of sight, slow back down and fly spinward around the ring about a hundred miles, just high enough that we don’t leave a trail in the dust. Then resume traveling toward the middle of the ring for a look at that central circle sea. Let me know if you see anything but crops. Otherwise, just tell me when we get to the sea.”

She headed for the machine shop to see how Manuel and his team were coming on some of her many requests.

***

“Well, Michael, it’s great to have you here with me at the IAAF World Indoor Championships. I’ve been reporting on track and field events for decades now but I personally only competed at the college level.” Roger Larbach turned to the cameras. “It will be a real treat having Mr. Fentis here with us to give us the perspective of someone who not only competed in the Indoor Championships but won eight medals in these events.”

“Thank you Roger. It’s my pleasure to be here. Looking out across the inside of this stadium brings back a lot of memories.”

“Well, let me take you back to those days. Tell me about the sixty meter sprint we’re about to watch. Significantly shorter than your signature hundred meter dash, the sixty relies more on acceleration than it does on a sustained top speed. Tell us what it takes to get up to the world’s fastest speed in so little distance?”

Fentis, who had seemed amiable a moment before, now looked at Larbach with an expression of deepest loathing. He said nothing

A wrinkle of concern between his brows, Larbach said, “Mr. Fentis?”

A muscle twitched on Fentis’ temple a couple of times, then he growled, “I told you I wouldn’t stand for this!”

With astonishment written large on his face Larbach said, “What…?”

“I told you I didn’t want to talk about that bitch Donsaii or her ridiculous claims. Yet your very first question focuses on her asinine contention that she reached a higher top speed in 25 meters than anyone else in history has in sixty or a hundred!”

Larbach tried to interrupt with, “I never said…”

Fentis rode over him, “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If she really thinks she can run, she should enter a track meet. I for one am sick to death of her nattering assertions that she’s some kind of great athlete just because she turned the heads of a few gymnastic judges eight years ago.”

Larbach said, “I don’t think she said…”

Fentis slammed a hand down on the desk and stood, “She might be pretty, she might be graceful, she might even run pretty fast, but there is no way that smug little twit could compete in any of today’s real sports.” He ripped off the head mounted microphone, tossed it on the floor and walked away.

Larbach stared after him uncomprehendingly, then turned to the cameras, “Well folks, I’m sorry about that. I knew Mr. Fentis was sensitive about Ell Donsaii and the claims—made by others, not her, I must point out—that she ran very fast going in to her vault. I didn’t think I said anything about her, but I guess I’ll have to go back over this vid to see if I somehow implied it…”

***

Gary stopped Ell in the hall at D5R. “Hey, you know some of those pressures you’re wanting me to use just aren’t achievable? Any chamber we might use would just blow out if we tried to reach those levels.”

Ell grinned at him, “So you’re saying that the chamber would have to be wrapped in something with really high tensile strength?”

“Uh…”

“’cause we’ve got someone here at D5R who makes really high tensile strength stuff. I think it’s called ‘graphene.’ Maybe I could put you in touch with him?”

Gary blushed and snorted, “What about the pump?”

“Hmmm, maybe the cylinder of a piston pump would have to be wrapped in graphene too? And it might need a long, solid piston with a diamond coating?”

Gary’s eyebrows shot up, “That’s gonna cost!”

“Little is achieved if nothing is ventured. Don’t be cheap Gary, do what you have to do.”

***

Carter stepped into the waldo controller room to start his shift and found AJ there before him practically dancing from foot to foot in excitement. “Carter!” he said, “I’ve got an idea!”

Carter had to grin at his enthusiasm but made him wait until Carter’d waldoed up and checked to make sure the shift at the asteroid had gotten off to a good start. Once that was done he pulled his gloves off and turned back to AJ, “OK, let’s hear it.”

“So I’ve been trying to figure out how to process ore without gravity…” he waggled his eyebrows. “But then I thought, why not just do it with gravity.”

Carter lifted an eyebrow, “So you figured out how to create gravity on our rock? That’d be pretty cool, but I have a feeling if you had gained control of gravity you’d be cashing in, not talking to me.”

“Well no. First I tried to figure out how to bring the rock back to the moon but Joe told me about how any attempts to fly asteroids toward the earth would run into legal problems over the risks of an impact. Then I thought about trying to spin the asteroid and put some kind of bag around it to catch the ore as it flew off.”

“Yeah,” Carter shrugged, “I’ve considered that but the ore would be flying off in all different directions. So as the ore flew off we’d have to have a bunch of ‘socks’ I’ve called them, to catch stuff and each sock would need a crusher and port at the end of it.”

“That’s what I was thinking too, but… how about if we crack the asteroid into two big pieces? Drill some holes through the center and load explosive, fire just enough of a charge to break it without sending the pieces flying apart. Before you fire the charges, attach them to each other with a 500 meter graphene cable so they can’t fly too far apart.”

“How are you going to put the cable on the surface between them before you break them apart?”

“Don’t have to. Attach the cable anywhere you want. That attachment point will become the ‘surface between them’ once they fly apart and the cable comes taught.”

“Oh, yeah,” Carter said, getting excited, “Then we spin them around one another.”

“Uh huh. They don’t have to spin very fast. Just barely enough that anything that we break off of them will fall into a single funneled ‘sock’ that will catch the ore and feed it into the crusher.”

“And, said crusher will work without so many hassles because it has gravity feeding the ore into it!”

“Yeah!” AJ’s eyebrows bobbed, “And, one more thing. Instead of a crusher we put some big ports across the openings of the sock at each step where it narrows.”

“Wait a minute AJ, the whole reason we want to crush the ore out there is so we won’t have to hold open big ports to send the ore back here to process it. It takes a lot of power to hold big ports open and send stuff through them.”

“Yeah!” AJ said with a big grin. “We build ports that have holes in them! I know all the ports the company has built so far are built on solid plates. But that’s only because the middle of the port disappears when the port opens. So there’s a plate across the opening until the port comes on and you’re suddenly looking at an opening to wherever the other end of the port is. But I got the research guys to give me a ten mm port pair.” He held a port pair up, “and I drilled the plates out to just under the diameter of the actual ports and glued them, one to the other with a five mm gap between them. I’ve modified the port controller to pulse the ports on for a microsecond, then back off every quarter second. Watch what happens!” He turned the ports so they faced downward over a piece of paper on his desk. He picked up a five mm steel rod, sliding it down through the hole in the ports a little. To his AI he said, “Turn it on.” A buzzing sound came from the port and the end of the rod that had been sticking out the bottom fell onto the paper. AJ let go of the rod and it slid through the two ports falling to the table in a pile of small chunks.”

Carter’s eyes were wide as he stared at the little pile of metal fragments. “Jeeez… that’s great AJ. Are you saying it doesn’t take much power to run the port like that?”

“Nope. The port’s only on four microseconds out of every second. With the big ones they’d probably only be on one microsecond out of every minute or so and you’d use an AI to decide when to turn them on, so that they’d only come on to slice the ore when a big chunk of ore was actually in the port’s throat. Even though big ports use a lot of power when they’re running, they wouldn’t use a lot of power over time.”

“Awesome!” Carter clapped AJ on the back. “I think the company might actually be glad they hired you.”

***

Steve heard a roaring sound outside the small office Ell’s security guys had in the outbuilding on her farm. Slamming out the door he looked around urgently … and saw Ell under whirling… blades? He assumed it had to be Ell. She wore a complete set of motorcycle leathers and a helmet. The leather rippled and dust blew up around her as he slowly stalked her way. She held onto something like a set of motorcycle handlebars attached to a vertical rod going up to the rotating blades above her. Another rod curved away from the vertical rod, around, over her, and down along her back. The curved rod looked to have a bicycle seat and a “Y” shaped set of bars at the bottom that had wheels for it to stand on. It had a small cross bar that her feet rested on.

Ell saw him and took one hand off the handlebar to wave at him. With the other hand she untwisted a motorcycle like throttle and the roaring began whistling down in pitch as the blades on the fan slowed. As they slowed he could see there were actually two coaxial sets of blades, one above the other, turning in opposite directions. The whole thing settled a little and Steve realized that Ell had its three feet locked down to a small concrete slab. The settling confirmed to Steve that the rotors had been actively trying to lift into the air. He fixed her with an eye and, concluding the noise level had reduced enough for her to hear, said, “Are you trying to build a personal helicopter!?!?”

Ignoring his horror-struck expression, she grinned at him and said, “Yeah! Cool huh?”

“For God’s sake Ell! Helicopters are dangerous! The smaller they are, the faster they act, the harder they are to control, and the more dangerous they are.”

“But fun!” she twinkled at him.

Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His job was to keep her safe… from others, not from herself. “Ell…” he began.

“Come on Steve, You know you’re gonna want to go up in it!”

Taken aback he looked at the device, “It won’t lift me!”

“Well, maybe not,” she raised her eyebrows, “but physics says it can.”

Looking at it harder he said, “Where’s the motor?”

“In the barn.”

Steve’s eyes widened, “You mean… power drive shafts are coming through ports? The motor etcetera is somewhere else?”

“Yep, just like we’re doing for my new car.”

Steve’s eyes ran over it again, “So the throttle on that handlebar just turns up the power to some electric motors in the barn?”

“An electric motor. That single motor uses a differential to turn the two opposing rotors so that it supplies torque to whichever one is the easier to turn. Keeps it from spinning me around.”

Steve mused, “Pulling the handlebar toward you leans the rotor forward and speeds you up?

“Yup, pushing it away leans the rotor back to slow me down or back me up. Leaning the rotor to either side sends me that direction.”

“How do you turn?”

“Oh, that works pretty neat too. Turn the handlebars, it’ll rotate you that direction. When you twist the bars they actually grip one or the other of the counter-rotating drive shafts to turn you the correct direction.”

Steve shook his head, “This is crazy dangerous and you really shouldn’t be allowed to try it you know.”

She crinkled her nose at him, “I know! Good thing I’m old enough that no one can tell me I can’t do it, huh?”

“No Ma’am. That’s a bad thing,” Steve said, thinking of the tremendous loss the human race would sustain should she kill herself.

She twisted the throttle and the blades started to speed up, “Well, step back in the shack. If I crash this thing,” she winked, “I don’t want to take you with me.” She knocked her visor back down over her eyes.

Shaking his head Steve turned and walked back to the corner of the shack where he could keep an eye on her. The rotors continued to speed up until the little copter was straining upward once again. She leaned it forward and back, then side to side. He could see her twisting the handlebars and got the feel that the entire thing was trying to turn.

She ran through more tilting and twisting as if wanting to get a good feel for the dynamics of its responses. Then to his amazement, she twisted the throttle harder and slowly lifted off the ground, little concrete slab and all. The slab, he realized, had long horizontal bars sticking off of it in four directions.

She only lifted to about six inches where she performed a number of very slow maneuvers. First she turned to the right and left, then moved forward and back and side to side. Finally she settled it back to the ground.

Steve walked back over as the blades spun back down. “What’s with the concrete and the long bars?”

“The weight slows the response time and the bars make it harder to tip it over. I flew some radio control helicopters when I was designing this thing. The first one I had came with some long sticks to attach to the undercarriage. They made it hard to flip over while I was learning.”

“Did you think about having an experienced helicopter pilot teach you how to fly this?”

“I learned to fly a helicopter myself.” She pointed her thumbs back at her own chest. “You’re looking at an ‘experienced helicopter pilot.’”

Steve frowned at her, “How many lessons did you take? Are you licensed?”

Ell barked a laugh, “Not even close to a license. But,” she tilted her head, “I can fly one, never fear.” She shrugged, “Experience on a full sized helicopter isn’t really that helpful for flying this thing though. Real helicopters pitch the rotor blades differently during each rotation to lift one side or the other of the ‘rotor disc.’ Almost all of them only have one lifting rotor and use a tail rotor to counteract the torque from the main rotor… So commercial helicopters work a lot differently and a trained pilot wouldn’t really understand, nor have a feel for this one. This thing is really simple. The blade pitch is always the same. For more lift we speed them up, for less lift we slow them down. No tail rotor because the coaxial counter-rotating blades cancel torque. Finally, I’m tilting the rotor disc relative to the weight suspended below it—me—rather than tilting the disc and the copter using blade pitch.”

Steve shook his head, “How… did you figure all this stuff out?”

“Oh…” she frowned as she considered it, “the math for helicopter aerodynamics is really pretty simple.” She shrugged, “I didn’t even have to do any of the calculations, just throw the right formulas at this high end AI of mine and he runs them.” She got down off the seat and started undoing the clamps that held the three feet to the concrete slab.

“Are you going to actually take this thing up now?”

“No time like the present.” She grinned up at him as she undid the last clamp.

Steve sighed and walked back over to the corner of the building. Moments later the blades were spinning back up. With a whir much quieter than the roar they’d been making earlier she lifted off the ground. Once again she only lifted about a foot off the ground. She rotated each direction, and then slid slowly right and left, forward and back.

Steve glanced down the entry drive and when he looked back Ell had lifted to about three feet and started out into the field where the horses had grazed under the farm’s previous owners. Ell had a few cows to keep the grass grazed down. Her grounds keeper took care of the cattle. As the whirling apparition moved out into the field the cows watched nervously for a few moments then turned and trotted off into the trees.

Ell flew slowly back and forth across the field before making some figure eights. She started going faster and lifted to about ten feet. Steve watched in growing dismay as she flew it harder and harder, turning and spinning and finally shooting hard up into the air to a height of several hundred feet. Moments later she came back down, skimmed just over the grass and back over to the barn, settling to the ground just in front of its open doors.

By the time Steve got there she’d wheeled it inside and was closing the doors. Steve shook his head, “You’re absolutely nuts, you know that?”

She grinned and flirted an eyebrow up, “But fun nuts, eh?”

“Does Shan know about this?”

Ell pulled her head back as if startled by the idea. “Oh hell no! He’d have the same fuddy duddy attitude you do!” She winked, “Better to ask forgiveness than permission you know?”

Chapter Five

Vanessa stopped dead in her tracks when her AI said, “You have a call from Ell Donsaii.”

“I’ll take it… Ms. Donsaii, will you do it?”

Donsaii didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “I’ll want a favor.”

“Name it!”

“Well, two favors. First I’d like my participation kept a secret until at least the opening ceremony.”

“Uh, I think we can do that. Since you won’t be showing up until then anyway it shouldn’t be too hard. What’s the other request?”

“I want to enter some Track and Field events too.”

“Oh! Um, I think their tryouts have already finished.”

“I’m aware. I believe the gymnastic tryouts are over as well?”

“Uh, well, we can make an exception to the gymnastic tryouts for you, but we don’t have any influence in Track and Field.”

“They won’t regret making this exception any more than you’ll regret making your exception. I am willing to let them time me on a track.”

Vanessa blinked a couple of times. “Let me see what I can do.”

Natya saw Vanessa coming from across the gym. The wild eyed emotions flitting across Vanessa’s face were hard to read. Natya focused back on Evangeline Burcross, “Vangie, you’re destroying your own routine. I can see the doubt in your eyes before you even mount the beam. I’m going to talk to Vanessa a minute. I want you to stand motionlessly here and picture yourself going through a perfect routine in your mind. Imagine perfect, understand? When I come back, you’re going to do a perfect routine, OK?”

Vangie nodded but without the resolute expression Natya had hoped for. Doubt still fluttered over her countenance.

With an internal sigh Natya turned to Vanessa, “Well?”

Vanessa looked excited, “She said ‘yes!’” Then Vanessa’s expression turned darker. “But she has conditions.”

After Vanessa had explained, Natya brought her eyes back down from the roof of the gym where they’d been focused. “I’ve met Shirley Black, the Women’s Track and Field head coach a couple of times,” she said slowly. “I’ll call her. I’ll have to think about what to say.” She turned back to the still skeptical Vangie and clapped her hands…

***

Ell and Shan were walking down Franklin Street when she got a text on her HUD that Sigwald was approaching the circle sea on the ringworld. She squeezed his hand, “Hey, let’s watch the feed from Sigwald.”

“But I’m hungry,” Shan said, glancing up at his HUD. “Oh. The sea. Let’s sit on the bench there.”

As Sigwald slowed his approach to the ring girdling sea, Ell and Shan settled onto the bench staring up at their HUDs.  “Wow,” Shan said, “the sea just looks like a narrow strip when we’re seeing it on the other side of the ring but now that we’re next to it I’m reminded that it’s huge in its own right.”

“Yeah,” Ell said snuggling in under his arm. “It’s only five percent of the width of the ring but that’s still 250 miles across.” As Sigwald approached the shore the water seemed to fade into the distant haze on its surface. Instead of the dropping away of sea to the horizon like they were used to here on the North Carolina shore they couldn’t see the other shore or the fields on the other side of the sea because of the gradual light diffusion-absorption of the atmosphere over so much distance.

Sigwald flew up and came to a stop on a wall at the water’s edge. “Well that’s a disappointment,” Shan said. “No sand.” There wasn’t any beach actually. The last field ended with a wall several feet high which was what Sigwald stood on at present. Small waves lapped up against the wall. Bigger waves could be seen out beyond a breakwater apparently made out of columns of the ubiquitous graphend.

Ell said, “No sigmas! You’d think they were hiding, but I just think there are hardly any of them here!”

Shan said wonderingly, “How can they have a world like this with so few of their people on it? Even if they didn’t want to live here, how could they run it without people on the spot?”

“Huh! I hadn’t considered that possibility.”

“What possibility?”

“That they didn’t want to live here. Do you think something about the ringworld makes them sick?”

“Yeah,” Shan snorted, “it’s boring!”

“No, really. Maybe they hate it here so they run it with only the absolute minimum number of sigmas necessary.”

“They’d still need more than we see!”

“I’m not so sure,” Ell mused. “If they were careful to build and stock the ringworld without weeds or pests and brought in only carefully bred or DNA constructed crops… Then the water cycle feeds the crops with a little help from pumping as needed. All you’d have to do is run those huge harvesters, dropping seeds behind as you went. Occasional repairs when your virtually unbreakable carbon allotrope machines do give up the ghost.” Ell sighed, “Allan, turn Sigwald 45 degrees left.” When Sigwald had turned they could see a much larger line of graphend columns marching out across the circle sea.

Shan said, “Those are probably to break big waves and keep them from doing damage.”

“Yeah… Like the intermittent wind breaks between the fields, they’ve put in wave breaks on the sea. The engineering of this place is just…” she twisted her lips, “astonishing, huh?”

“But… dreary.”

She sighed, “Yeah, I know what you mean. Inspiring in its scope. Depressing in its artless method. Frightening in its implications.”

“Frightening?”

“Yeah, what if they find a way to get to our solar system? Holy crap, it could be tough to stop the kind of single minded juggernaut that could build this ringworld!”

A frisson of foreboding shot through Shan. “Could we stop them?”

Ell sighed again, “I don’t know… Allan, let’s go back to the last circle road and have Sigwald continue spinward. Watch for evidence of sigmas and let us know when you find any. Let’s try to find another sigma to talk to.”

***

It was Morgan and Lane’s college spring break. In an effort to derail any drunken spring break trips the girls—well mostly Lane—might plan, Malcolm and Fay Kinrais had decided to rent a house in Florida themselves. Malcolm’s home automation business had been doing quite well these past two years because he’d seen early on what the new PGR chips would mean to the industry. Kinrais Industries had been first to the market with some new adapters that allowed a home’s automation to be connected to sensors in new locations without running wires. They made a killing on tiny battery powered window sensors that tied into burglar alarm systems with the chips. If he could get the ports, Malcolm was planning to eliminate the batteries in the next generation by using small ports to transfer the power. Then he planned to build a series of port powered motorized home devices such as grates that could pull more conditioned air from the central air conditioning system into occupied rooms.

He wondered if there was any way that Raquel could set him up a meeting with someone at D5R so that he could present his idea to be the distributor of room heating and cooling devices based on D5R’s new solar devices. For now his business was doing well, so he was paying for this entire vacation for his family. If business got much better he hoped to pay off his kids’ college debts for them.

Malcolm heard a knock on the door of the house their family had rented at St. Petersburg. The girls were already there so he expected that this would be Shan and his new fiancée Raquel. “Hey guys!” he said, as he opened the door to their smiling faces. “Let me take that bag,” he said taking the suitcase from Ell’s hand.

As Shan and Raquel unpacked, Malcolm called to them, “Morgan and Lane are already down at the beach. Fay and I were just about to go down. Put on your suits and we’ll all go join them together.”

At the beach, Shan set down his stuff, snuck up behind Lane, picked her up by the waist and ran into the water. Lane shrieked the whole way.

Morgan turned to Raquel, stunned by how physically fit the girl looked in her bikini. She wondered if Raquel was one of those women who exercised so much that they didn’t have periods and were infertile. She wasn’t muscular enough to be unattractive but, wow, what a body! Mentally shrugging, she smiled and said to Raquel, “A long standing family tradition.” She jerked a thumb at Shan, now splashing water on Lane. “Lane always wants to just lie out on the beach but Shan drags her into the water at least once every trip.”

Malcolm and Fay were just shaking their heads. Raquel grinned back at Morgan. “I want to try out my ‘port snorkel.’ Do you have yours?”

Shortly Morgan and Raquel splashed out into the water. Morgan handed Lane her snorkel mouthpiece and Raquel tossed a mouthpiece and goggles to Shan. They dove into the water and swam out into the deeper water.

On a break at the surface Raquel said, “This is pretty disappointing! There’s a lot of coral just off the shore of D5R’s island in the Bahamas. Cool fish everywhere! All I’ve seen here are a few tiny fish.”

“Yeah, this beach has a long flat sandy shelf and not much food for fish. If you want to do some cool snorkeling we need to go to Siesta Key. It isn’t very far from here and is supposed to have a lot of nice underwater scenery.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

Malcolm was checking out the grill on the deck of the beach house in preparation for grilling their dinner that night when Raquel appeared beside him. “Hey,” she said, “can I help?”

“Not with this.” He winked, “I’ve got grillin’ down pat. But,” he said to her with a more serious look, “I’ve been wondering if you could put me in touch with someone out there at D5R where you work? My business makes products for the home, mostly for home automation. But I’ve been thinking about small space heaters and coolers based on D5R’s ports in space. You know the hot ones near the sun and the cold ones out in deep space?”

Raquel tilted her head, “Hmmm, you mean instead of hooking into a house’s central air, you’d just make little heater-coolers that people could carry around to wherever they were in their house?”

Malcolm nodded, “Yeah. There’s already a pretty big industry selling electric space heaters of course, but there hadn’t been any technology that a ‘space cooler’ could be based on until now.”

Raquel frowned, “But why not just install it at the central air conditioning system? They can just shut off the furnace and air-conditioning parts of the existing system. Then run their existing fan to pump the air over the coils that are heated or cooled out in space.”

“Well there’s no doubt that’s the way most of it will be done. I’m shooting for the low end of the market. People that can’t afford a major retrofit to their central air but would like a little local comfort. Something you could take with you camping, or to your office that’s kept too cold or hot for you, or out to your garage for a project.”

“Those sound like some great ideas.” She grinned, “Sure, I can put you in touch with some folks over at ET Resources, the subdivision of D5R that does the space ports.” She stared out at the beach a moment… then back at him, eyes narrowed, “How about a personal heater-cooler? Install tubing under a Mylar jacket. We haven’t been able to heat or cool clothing in the past because no one could carry that much power around with them—batteries just don’t have the juice. But a couple of ports to pump cold fluid through fine hoses inside a jacket could be pretty awesome.” She squinted out at the sea, “Or even a shirt?” She stepped over to the stairs, and sent a twinkly look back at his flabbergasted expression. “I’m going to go out for a little run.”

Stunned by her idea for personal AC, Malcolm bemusedly admired the graceful way she flowed down the stairs and loped out onto the sandy beach. Once on the firmer damp sand she turned parallel to the shore and ran lithely along it. He was just about to turn his eyes back to the grill when he noticed a large black man get up from where he’d been sitting on the sand, dust himself off and start jogging down the beach behind her. Worried, Malcolm picked up his binoculars and kept his attention on her. At first he was concerned because a man who might not have benign intent was following Raquel. Then quite a ways into the distance, the man pulled up beside her and it became evident that they were talking as they slowly jogged along. Then they slowed to a walk together. After a bit the man jogged on but she turned and started back.

Malcolm frowned. What were the chances that she’d accidentally run into someone she knew in St. Petersburg? He wondered if he should tell Shan about it. Then he became distracted from this when he started thinking about her suggestion regarding personal air conditioning again. The more he thought about it the more excited he got. As Raquel neared the beach house he found himself conflicted. Breaking Raquel and Shan up would torpedo his space cooler plans.  Nonetheless, he resolved to tell Shan about her clandestine meeting. If it ruined an intro to D5R he might have had through Raquel, he’d just have to find another way. Family came first and he didn’t want his son blindsided by an unfaithful woman.

The Kinrais family sat in the living room of their beach house. Raquel was back taking a shower. Malcolm glanced around, thinking how proud he was of his three kids. In their own way each had grown into an admirable human being. Lane sometimes acted a little immaturely still, but as the youngest, she still had some growing to do. Shan having a job and getting married, now that was a big step.

As if he knew his dad was thinking about him Shan leaned forward and cleared his throat. “While Raquel’s out of the room, I’d like to talk to you guys about something.”

Everyone looked his way and Shan said, “You know how we keep a secret for Uncle Rob?”

More than a few widened eyes in his audience signified their sudden shift from dreamy relaxation to sharp focus. The secret was one that they rarely mentioned, even amongst themselves. With their attention full on him Shan said, “Raquel has a secret too.” He looked from one to another of them, then said, “One that she’s given me permission to relate to you, but a secret that I would want you to agree to hold to the same degree of confidence that we hold Uncle Rob’s.”

Shan’s family looked at one another, surprise writ large on their faces. Malcolm looked around at them himself. Rob may be Fay’s brother but Malcolm loved him as if he were his own. He would hold Rob’s secret against all comers. What kind of secret could Raquel have that would need to be maintained at that level?

Shan stared at his mother who looked back at him wide eyed, but eventually nodded without saying a word. Shan glanced at Malcolm who was already nodding.

Taking in their serious demeanors, Shan nodded back at them and turned to Lane, fixing her with his gaze. Lane tossed off a shrug as if it were of no consequence. Shan said, “Laney, that’s not good enough kiddo. A shrug and a roll of the eyes says that you don’t actually believe it’s important. It says you aren’t really engaged or committed to keeping this secret. It also says that to you, it’s like a secret you might agree with your friends to keep, but then find yourself immediately telling another friend. When you told that friend, you’d ask them to keep the secret that you just blew. But we all know how that kind of secret just keeps on traveling… I’m going to ask you to leave for a while so I can tell the others, OK? Go get an ice cream or something.”

Shan didn’t wait for Lane’s response, turning instead to Morgan, “Can you keep it?”

Morgan said quietly, “As long as it’s not that she committed a murder or some other crime against humanity, yes I can.”

Shan said, “Thanks, Morg’.” He turned to Lane, “Can you give us a little time alone to talk to Raquel?”

A tear trickled down Lane’s suddenly ashen face, “Why don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you kid, but I can’t trust you when you act like this isn’t serious business. You’re treating it like a game or frivolous request. Something you wouldn’t have to stick to. You aren’t committing to it like we all committed to Uncle Rob.”

“OK,” Lane’s voice cracked, “I commit to it completely. I personally guarantee that no one but the four of you will ever hear me speak of it.”

Shan fixed her with his eyes again for a minute, then nodded, “OK. Let me get Raquel.” He stood and left the room.

A few minutes later he returned… with Ell Donsaii.

Everyone’s eyes widened. Malcolm shot to his feet. “Ms. Donsaii, I – I – I didn’t even know you were in Florida…” His eyes darted to Shan, then back to the hallway where Raquel should have been coming from and Ell had come instead. He sat with a thump, staring at Shan with raised eyebrows, “Raquel, and Ms. Donsaii… are… the same person?” He glanced down to note that Shan and Ell were holding hands.

Shan and Ell nodded slowly but simultaneously.

“But… why?”

Ell sat on the ottoman and ran her eyes seriously over the group. Quietly she began, “Because my life as Ell is a disaster. Paparazzi, kidnappers, constant requests for autographs… I actually have a security team following me everywhere… just to try to prevent another kidnapping!”

Malcolm’s eyebrows rose as he realized who the large man that Ell had met on the beach must be.

Ell went on to explain how impossible it was to live a normal life as Ell and what life could be like for any children she and Shan might have. She talked about snipers and kidnappings and expectations. “So,” she concluded, “I live most of my real life in disguise. I intend to live my life with Shan as I have been… as ‘Raquel Blandon,’ an ordinary, happy go lucky girl, with a nice job at D5R and an awesome husband who teaches math at UNC.

Shan’s family stared at him, then at Ell, then at one another. “Even if you do, your kids won’t be able to keep a secret like that!” Fay said.

“They’ll be able to keep the secret if they don’t know it.”

“You’re going to raise your children so that they don’t even know who you really are?”

Ell nodded, “Until they’re older, yes. I’m not sure what the right age will be. We’ll have to play that by ear.”

Fay shook her head, “When you first said it, I thought you guys were crazy. But after that explanation about snipers,” she shrugged, “I’ll have to admit, I agree it’s the best solution.”

Lane threw her head back and barked a laugh, “Oh my God! Not telling people about this is just going to kill me!”

Shan grinned at her, “Now you can see why I had to get you Laney, of all people, to take the promise of secrecy seriously.”

Morgan snorted, “In February I tried to teach the world’s greatest athlete how to ski!” She moaned, “I feel like such an idiot.”

Shan chuckled, “Not as much of a fool as I did. I have to admit that I was excited to take her skiing just so I could prove to her that there was at least one sport that I’m better at than she is… That blew up in my face when she was skiing better than I can by the end of her first day!”

Morgan tracked back to Ell, “No…! That was really your first day skiing?”

Blushing, Ell shrugged a little, “I’m pretty good at sports stuff.”

Morgan let out a peal of laughter, “‘Pretty good,’ now there’s an understatement!”

Trying to change the topic Ell said, “So! On to planning the wedding. An issue for us is that my family isn’t very big and the members of my family who know who ‘Raquel’ is are even fewer. I have some friends I’d like to invite, but not that many. So the wedding party will be small on my side. But we can invite as many of your family as you want. How many were you thinking?” Ell raised her eyebrows at Fay.

“Oh! I hadn’t given it much thought yet. But of course we’d be fine with a small wedding. Maybe we could have it at a destination? Then we could invite lots of people, they just wouldn’t show up.”

Ell looked at Shan, “That’s something we’d discussed. My mother and I are thinking D5R’s island in the Caribbean. People who wanted to go would have to fly to Miami. Then we’d charter a little ‘island hopper’ plane to take folks the rest of the way.”

“Really?” Fay asked, “D5R will just let you use their island like that? I know as ‘Ell’ you’re the what… CEO? But, as Raquel…?”

“Yeah, D5R has a policy of letting employees vacation on the island if they want. If there are empty seats you can even ride out there on D5R’s jet. We wouldn’t even be the first wedding, though the other one only had four people in the ‘wedding party.’”

Malcolm said, “My business has been doing pretty well recently… and might do even better in the near future,” he winked at Ell, “so we could charter the island hopper.”

Later, as they got ready to get in bed, Shan asked, “I thought your ‘rich grandmother’ was going to charter a plane?”

“Only if we were going to have a big wedding on the island.”

***

“You have a call from Natya Kolmenya, head coach for Team USA women’s gymnastics.”

Shirley Black blinked. She’d sat next to Kolmenya at a dinner for the Olympic coaches and spoken to her briefly at a couple of other meetings. Why the woman would call her out of the blue she couldn’t imagine. “Put her on. Hello Natya?”

“Hey Shirley, how’s your team shaping up?”

“We’ve got a lock on some medals and a bunch of athletes that might step up or might totally collapse. We’ll just have to wait and see like everyone else. What can I do for you?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve got someone that wants to try out for the sprints and long jump.”

Shirley snorted, “They’re months too late. Sorry, our roster is full up.”

“Shirley… it’s Ell Donsaii,” Natya said quietly.

For the first time in a long time the normally verbose Shirley found herself speechless. Prickles ran over her scalp. She and one of her assistant coaches had once tried to analyze the famous video of Donsaii running to her vault. By their best calculations it did seem like the girl had achieved a higher top speed than Fentis.

But, it just seemed impossible. The men’s 100 meter world record held by Fentis was an entire second faster than Keelaw Fell’s record for women. That an untrained woman could achieve a higher top speed running barefoot in a gym seemed unlikely in the extreme.

Shirley took a deep breath. “I’d have to see her run in a timed trial against another runner.”

“She says she’ll be in San Diego next Tuesday and can drop by the Chula Vista training center.”

Shirley let that big breath out, “I’ll be here. Give her my contact info.”

“OK. And Shirley?”

“Um hmm?”

“She wants this kept a secret.”

Shirley barked a laugh. “Fat chance of that. Just the fact that she showed up here will be all over the news.”

“She said she’d wear a disguise.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Shirley, Donsaii says she can bring home the gold. If I were you, I wouldn’t bet against her.”

Reflecting that Team USA’s chances at gold in the various women’s sprints weren’t that great this Olympics, Black took a deep breath and said, “OK, if there’s a leak, it won’t be from me.”

Chapter Six

Waiting for the bus at twilight, Viveka felt a mixture of trepidation and warm anticipation. Trepidation over making the long bus ride by herself. Before she’d always had someone she knew to ride with. Anticipation that soon she would see her family for the first time in nearly a year.

Members of the adivasi people, Viveka’s family lived far out in the Indian countryside. Though government sponsored schools did what they could, education seemed a luxury to most people in her region. However, bemused by Viveka’s inquisitiveness, her mother did send her to the local school, in large measure to get the girl out of her hair.

The teachers at the school at first thought Viveka dull because she constantly seemed to be daydreaming. But, when they called on her, she knew the answers—every time. Recognizing a brilliant but bored child, the teachers rapidly advanced her through the primary and then upper primary curricula. She loved learning and set national records on the promotion exams, unheard of in that district. Very few students in that rural area progressed beyond upper primary so the school suggested that she be sent to a bigger city for further education. They felt her intelligence could take her far, but that as a girl, far ahead of her grade, her intelligence would generate antagonism in the few higher level schools in the rural area where Viveka’s family lived. One of the teachers even told Viveka’s mother that she didn’t think the local high schools or colleges would provide sufficient challenge to keep her interested.

Viveka’s mother, taking great pride in her brilliant child, pressed Viveka on her cousin Moman who lived in Delhi, sending money the family could ill afford to spare so that the cousin would board her.

Her grades and scores resulted in free admission to a nice private school as a “special case.” Completing the two years of high school Viveka found herself invited to attend the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi with a full tuition scholarship from the Bikram Foundation. She’d been working on a degree in chemical engineering and truly enjoyed her classes.

Life seemed good, Viveka’s mother was ecstatic and even her father seemed vaguely proud. Viveka knew her father’s pride would have been boundless for a son who had achieved anything similar to Viveka, but she gladly accepted what praise she received from her beloved Papa. Even her mother’s cousin Moman bragged of Viveka’s accomplishments to her neighbors—when she thought Viveka couldn’t hear. That didn’t keep Moman from complaining to Viveka about the difficulty of keeping her and demanding that Viveka take on more and more of the cleaning and cooking. Nonetheless, Viveka took pride in Moman’s boasting.

A bus finally arrived and Viveka checked the destination display twice. Concluding that she had the right bus she hefted her small bag and got on. Dismayed but already in the aisle, she realized that almost all of the passengers were men. Many stared openly at her, some wolfishly.

Many Indian men still felt that any woman traveling alone must have loose morals, or at least be easy prey. Viveka always wore western style baggy pants and loose shapeless tops in hopes of diminishing the interest of the men she met. Rising to her toes she saw with relief that a seat near a family in the back stood empty.

Shuffling down the aisle, she gritted her teeth as several of the men surreptitiously rubbed their arms or shoulders against the outsides of her thighs as she squeezed past. She knew that if she complained, they would protest that crowding on the bus had forced them into contact. And everyone would shake their heads and say it was a shame—but Viveka knew those men could easily have given her the room to get by without contact if they tried. A man going down that aisle wouldn’t have been touched at all.

To her horror, as she neared the empty seat, she saw the man in the adjoining seat openly leering at her. She glanced around but there were no other empty seats this far back in the bus. With a sigh, she slipped into the seat, huddling as far from him as her arm rest would allow.

The man immediately turned toward her, letting his knee rest against hers. “Hello Sweetie,” he bobbed his eyebrows, “where are you going?”

In a forlorn hope that reminding the man she had a family might dissuade him from making advances, Viveka said, “Home to see my family. I haven’t seen my Mama or Papa for nearly a year.”

“I’ll bet you have a lot of boyfriends!”

As the man’s sour breath washed over her, Viveka realized the man had been drinking. “No,” she said, looking around for escape in the dimly lit interior of the bus.

“Would you like one?”

When Viveka glanced at the man she realized he’d maneuvered his right arm up behind her. His hand dropped onto her shoulder. Sweaty, she could tell even through the cloth of her top. He tugged her towards him. “No!” she said, pulling away.

Undeterred, the man pulled harder with his right hand as his left hand crept toward her.

Horrified, Viveka pulled her shoulders forward and dropped her chin as if curling inward on herself. She turned in her seat to face out toward the aisle. For a moment she considered getting up and trying to make the long ride standing out in the aisle. A picture rolled bleakly over her of this man, or others, pinching her bottom as she stood beside their seats. She’d been pinched often enough in the past. How could I have thought it would be OK to take this bus by myself? she wondered in dismay. She would never have ridden a cross country bus alone in the past, but after the time she’d spent around her modern minded university schoolmates she’d begun to feel somehow that the world had changed.

The man’s powerful right hand held her in her seat and his left crept over her stomach toward her breasts. “Come on Sweetie,” the man said in a wash of garlicky boozy breath, “if you’re going to be my girl, you must be friendly.”

Huddling in on herself, feeling appalled, Viveka saw the glinting of a wedding band on the man’s finger. “No!” she hissed twisting away and wondering why she didn’t scream. Taught her whole life not to make a fuss. “Respect your elders” – she’d heard it a thousand times, but how, said her inner voice, can you give respect to this man? How can you worry about disturbing the other passengers? Why can’t you stand up for yourself?

The man’s arm turned her inexorably back toward him and a finger came to lift her chin.

Viveka glanced up to see his excited eyes, his face descending towards hers. He’s going to try to kiss me! She squirmed and slithered lower in her chair. She felt powerless, like in an early morning dream with horror approaching and her limbs twitching weakly, unable to move her.

“Hold still!” the man said, grasping her breast and pulling her upward in her seat.

“No!” Viveka shrieked, twisting from his grasp and out into the aisle. She stood, gasping, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Leave me alone, you animal!” she said, with as much loathing as she possibly could.

Another, man rose from the seat across the aisle and back one from where Viveka had been. He rose and rose. The man was huge! He stepped out into the aisle.

The man Viveka had just escaped from slid to her side of their two seats and reached out to her, saying, “Come back my little randi (prostitute).”

Viveka’s inner thoughts screaming, am I about to be raped by these men?! No one will go against that big man if he attacks me! She backed away from them. She steeled herself for anticipated groping touches of the men in the seats she was passing.

But then the large man who’d just stood into the aisle said gently, “You may sit with my wife if you like.” He waved a hand at the seat he had stood from. His wife sat there with her daughter on her lap. The woman smiled at Viveka and patted the seat next to her.

With a thump, the large man sat down next to the man who’d been tormenting Viveka, grinned at him and said, “You seem very friendly. Do you have many boyfriends?”

That man found himself shrinking against the window.

Shaking Viveka crept back to sit beside the man’s wife. The woman patted her on the arm and said, “There are good men in this world, though…” she glanced around, “not as many as one would hope.”

An hour passed before Viveka’s heart calmed enough for her to drift off to sleep.

***

“Boss?”

Malcolm Kinrais looked up and raised his eyebrows.

“Uh, we have a package here, addressed to you.”

“Well, open it up.”

“Uh, sir, it says ‘confidential.’ To be opened by Malcolm Kinrais only.”

“Really? Who’s it from?”

“D5R.”

Malcolm sat up excitedly. “Let me see.”

Inside the box he found two coils of copper tubing with a pump built onto one end. A smaller box inside contained twenty pairs of small ports.

As he stood bemusedly staring at the contents of the box his AI said, “You have a call from Raquel Blandon.”

“Put her on… Hi Raquel, I just got a package from D5R.”

“Yeah, my AI told me you’d opened it, that’s why I’m calling. I thought I should explain what you have there?”

He chuckled and said, “That’d help.”

“OK, you have two copper tubes. One’s filled with a heat transfer fluid and ported to a tube in near solar orbit. The other has a cold transfer fluid and is ported to deep space. Switch on the pumps. One will get hot, the other will get cold. My thoughts are that you don’t want to pump 600oF fluid anywhere, it might burn someone. Same for minus 148oF. So I think you should use those tubes to heat or cool some water here on earth. Heat it to a temp that’s safe, then pump that water through the smaller port pairs in the box. Those are all the little ports that you have there. That water could go to one of your ‘space heaters’ or to a ‘space cooler.’ Personally, I think with the way the price of electricity’s been dropping, people will probably take the easy way out and heat with electricity. Clothing heated with electricity delivered through ports will be pretty neat for people up north. But personal cooling; that would be awesome. I think a lightweight shirt with cooling tubes in it for ‘personal cooling’ could be a huge seller.”

“And if we can make a viable product out of these, you think we could get a supply of ports to put in a commercial version? I know there’s a backlog…”

“Hmmm,” Malcolm could hear the grin in her voice, “I think you’ve got some kind of an inside track…”

***

After sleeping poorly on the bus Viveka arrived at her parents’ tiny house in the early morning. As she walked the path she’d run down so many times as a child she took in the look of her childhood home with a new eye. Smaller even than she remembered, it had a broken-down look she didn’t recall. Uncertain whether her home had changed, or only her perspective, she opened the door and called “Mama, Papa?”

“Viveka!” her little sister shouted, crashing into her and wrapping her in a fierce hug.

Viveka’s mother turned from the pot she’d just stirred, a broad smile on her face. Viveka gave her sister the small doll she’d brought, then stepped to clasp her mother. “Where’s Papa?”

A strained and worried grimace crossed her mother’s face. “He’s resting. He hasn’t been feeling well…”

Viveka and her mother chattered for an hour, Viveka telling her of the strangeness of life in Delhi and the challenges of school. Her mother told her of the goings on in their community. A neighbor had been unfaithful to his wife. Another had won a small prize from Lotto India. Of great excitement, a small company had been formed and had begun manufacturing parts to ship to the United States. Many of the men who had lost their tiny farms to the bigger combines had been hired.

The company had been founded by the son of the village headman who, like Viveka, had attended the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.

Viveka’s mother smiled at her, “Maybe you can start a company too, once you have graduated.” She raised an eyebrow, “The parts they make are for a company called ‘Portal Tech’ in America. And you know,” she leaned forward to point a finger at Viveka, “that Portal Tech company? It was founded by a woman!”

“Yes Mama. Ell Donsaii. She’s the one who stopped the comet.”

Her mother appeared startled, “Really?”

Viveka nodded. “She’s very brilliant. Some say that she is the most gifted person in the world.” Viveka glanced distantly out the small window, “If I could do one thousandth as well as she, I would be very, very happy.”

Her mother interrupted Viveka’s daydream of success by saying, “Why don’t you take your Papa his tea? He should get up even if he is feeling poorly.” With a smile her mother said, “He will be so happy to see his Vivi again.”

Grinning Viveka took the cup and pulled aside the curtain that hid her parents’ bed from the rest of their tiny home. “Papa?”

He didn’t wake. Viveka sat next to him, “Papa?” She shook his shoulder but it didn’t move normally… It seemed stiff… then, in one horrific instant she knew what had happened. “Papa!” she wailed.

Her mother threw back the curtain, alarm writ wide in her eyes, “Nooo!”

***

As she walked the tunnel from her farm to the house she shared with Shan Ell said, “Allan, give me the feed from Sigwald. It’s been quite a while. Haven’t we seen anything but fields?”

Ell’s HUD lit with one of the ringworld’s graphend roads flowing by at the 50 miles per hour that Ell had set Sigwald to traveling the circle road. The crops were tall in this region so Sigwald couldn’t see beyond the plants bordering the road but when he passed one of the perpendicular roads Ell still saw the circle sea off to the right. Allan said, “Sigwald hasn’t encountered anything but fields of this same plant for the last 11,322 miles.”

“OK let’s slow down to 20 miles an hour and lift off the road to higher than the level of the top of this crop so we can look around.”

The flow of the crops past Sigwalds oculars slowed and Ell’s point of view rose about eighteen inches. At that point she could see over the tops of the local plant growth. These plants, exactly like the ones they’d seen when they’d first reached the sea, displayed a profusion of tiny wispy leaves. It seemed as if nothing had changed since they’d begun following the circle road more than a week ago.

Wow, Ell thought, almost one sixth of the way around this ringworld without encountering anything? No matter how automated they’re running things that seems a bit much. “Allan, you would have stopped Sigwald and let me know if he’d encountered machines or other forms of automation, not just if you’d encountered sigmas, right?”

“Yes, all I’ve encountered are fields. However, almost all of the crops have been taller than Sigwald, so the view has been very limited.”

Ell squeezed her eyes shut in exasperation. Damn, no matter how high end and ‘intuitive’ an AI gets, you can still count on it to occasionally follow instructions too literally! Cursing wouldn’t fix it though. “Allan, please turn rimward and travel until the crops are shorter than Sigwald. Once his view is unobstructed, turn spinward again and resume traveling, letting me know if you encounter anything but crops.” She glanced aside as she stepped into the basement of their house and chuckled. “And, also tell me if the crops get high and block the view.”

***

Keisha Abbot heard Coach Black call to her. She looked up from her stretching and saw the coach waving her over to the long jump pit. She trotted that way. Coach indicated a slender young woman in sweats who stood beside her. Dark brown hair moussed up into spikes. A large beaky nose and moderately dark skin, she looked vaguely Mediterranean. Black said, “Meet Shelly Rowdon. She’s here to try out for long jump and sprints.”

“Try out?”

“For the team.”

Keisha’s eyes widened, “I’ve never even heard of her! How’s she getting a pass on the tryouts!”

Frowning, Black shrugged, “She is trying out. Here… today… against you. Some people think she should be on our team.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Well… probably.” Black glanced at Rowdon in a measuring fashion. “But, we’ll soon find out, won’t we?”

Shortly Keisha found herself lining up on the runway to the long jump. The new girl watched from off to one side. Keisha jumped 7.1 meters—a little more than 23 feet. It wasn’t her best but wasn’t terrible either. She stepped aside to wait for the new girl to take her jump but to her surprise this Rowdon said she wasn’t ready and asked if Keisha would jump again.

Keisha shrugged and agreed. This time when she lined up, the new girl stood down by the foul line, carefully watching Keisha jump. Keisha got the weird feeling that this Rowdon was trying to pick up technique pointers by watching her jump. That would be ludicrous if the girl truly thought she could compete at an Olympic level, but Keisha still had that feeling. She looked around, wondering where Rowdon’s coach could be. Surely, if the coach had invested the time and effort to get Black to let her try out, said coach would have come along to see how the trial turned out wouldn’t she?

Keisha’s second jump was 7.41 meters or about 24.3 feet. Better than she’d ever done in a meet though not quite her personal best in practice. It would have been a world record back in the 1980s, though not any more.

They smoothed the sand and the new girl lined up at the end of the runway seeming a little uncertain. Keisha watched her run down toward the pit. She seemed somehow… graceful. And surprisingly fast even though she didn’t look as if she were straining violently to run her very fastest like most jumpers did. Keisha watched from near the pit and almost laughed when she saw Rowdon take off nearly six inches in front of the foul line.

But the girl sailed gracefully along to land surprisingly far down into the pit. In fact, looking at where she landed, Keisha had a sudden knot in her stomach. Keisha had jumped thousands of times in this pit and the break Rowdon had made in the smooth sand seemed impossibly far down the pit. When Keisha stepped closer to look at the permanent tape along the side of the pit she saw that Rowdon had jumped 7.92 meters or just a hair shy of 26 feet. With the world record still standing at 7.55 meters, that was just unbelievable! Keisha had heard someone claim a 7.61 in practice, but 7.92 was just preposterous! If Rowdon had actually taken off at the foul line instead of 6 inches back it would have been 26.5 feet! Keisha glanced surreptitiously at Coach Black and saw her goggling at the mark, evidently just as astonished as Keisha.

Black said, “OK. Let’s try that again.”

Rowdon just shook her head.

Black looked at her incredulously. “Do you want to be on the team or not?”

Rowdon said quietly, “I believe that was a world record jump, no?”

Black reluctantly nodded, looking like she might explode.

Rowdon practically whispered, “If that’s not good enough to get me on the team as a long jumper, what would be?”

Black burst out, “What if that was just some kind of freak event?”

“It wasn’t. Shall we try the 100 meters?”

Coach Black purpled up and for a moment Keisha hoped she might toss this new girl off the field. Then Keisha realized that she didn’t want Rowdon to go. If the girl could really jump that well, Keisha wanted Rowdon on her team, even if it meant the end of Kiesha’s own scant hopes that she might medal on the long jump.

After a moment Black swallowed whatever she’d been about to say and nodded sourly toward the track. The three of them walked silently over to the 100 meter starting blocks. Keisha did have a good shot at the gold in the 100. She hoped this girl wouldn’t prove to be freakishly good at that event as well.

Keisha stepped up to the blocks that they left set up for her on this track. Then she watched unbelievingly as Rowdon stepped into the blocks set up for Marilyn without adjusting them for the fact that she was taller and much longer legged than Marilyn.

For her part Rowdon seemed to be watching Keisha position herself in the blocks with great interest. Keisha, on the other hand, practically goggled as Rowdon clumsily positioned herself in Marilyn’s blocks. Because Marilyn was shorter, Rowdon’s hands and feet were much too close together and her butt was too high in the air. When the gun went off Keisha got off to a much better start. In fact it was laughably better. However, twenty meters down the track Rowdon had caught up to Keisha. They ran neck and neck to about the seventy meter mark. Then Rowdon rapidly pulled away. Keisha had never been beaten so badly and she quickly looked over to the time clock wondering how badly she’d done. Black immediately reset the clock to zero, but not before Keisha had seen it reading 9.91 seconds. Rowdon had run a full half second better than the women’s world record!

Keisha shook her head, who is this woman and where has she been until now?!

Keisha moped around the field, halfheartedly following her training routine while keeping her eye on Black and Rowdon. She saw Rowdon beat Michelle at the 200, then Rowdon went into the training room for a while. About an hour later Rowdon came back out and beat Seychelle at the 400. She didn’t beat either of them very badly, but holy crap, she’d just beat each of the best women sprinters on Team USA… at their own events.

Later Keisha buttonholed Coach Black. “So is Rowdon going to be on the team?”

Black shrugged, “We’ll see. We may be putting her in at the last minute.”

Keisha found herself torn. She didn’t want to have to pit herself against such a phenomenal athlete. If that happened Keisha would have no chance to win the gold. On the other hand, she did want Team USA to kick some ass!

Could the girl be on drugs?

***

Morgan and Lane drove down to Chapel Hill for ‘Raquel’s’ bachelorette party. Emma, Bridget and Amy rounded out the group, Amy and Emma having been the main organizers. With Raquel in neon red and the other five wearing black, they stepped outside chattering to one another.

Ell’s eyebrows rose when she saw the long black car outside. “A limo?”

Emma sniffed, “Of course! We’re doin’ this in style.”

As the limo started down the road Ell said, “And where is it we’re going?”

Amy arched an eyebrow, “There’s a Chippendale show in Greensboro.”

With a look of confusion, Ell said plaintively, “We’re going to look at furniture? I don’t even like those older styles.”

The other five glanced at each other in astonishment over their bride’s naiveté, then began snorting with laughter. Daintily dabbing at an eye, Emma said, “Oh, I think you’re going to find these versions of Chippendale to be very modern.”

***

Ryan finally found the gate that the chartered island hopper was flying out of. He’d talked to folks at D5R about the company’s island and it sounded pretty nice. He’d been hoping to snag a ride out there on one of the corporate jet’s trips someday anyway. Being in the wedding made him a little nervous though. He’d been surprised when Shan asked him to stand up as his best man at the wedding. When he thought about it he really shouldn’t have been surprised. He and Shan had been roommates for five years now, and though they gave each other constant shit, they were about as close as men ever get. He’d gotten a cheap deal on the flight to Miami and Shan’s folks had chartered the island hopper so at least it wouldn’t be as expensive as he’d feared when he’d first learned that it was a “destination wedding.”

Now that he worked for D5R he could even afford it. The pay scale there had surprised him, and the people he worked with like Emma, Roger and John were great. He could even afford to keep renting the little house that he’d shared with Shan. He had it all to himself now which was great, even though it was a bit of a pigpen without Shan to straighten it occasionally. Musingly he wondered if he could afford a cleaning service every couple of weeks now.

Damn! They’re boarding the plane! I guess I’m kinda late. Ryan jogged the last little bit and they waved him down the stairs to a medium sized prop plane. When he got to the stairs he realized that Bridget was just in front of him. “Hi Bridget,” he said.

She turned and gave him a brilliant smile, “Hey yourself. Bet you didn’t picture this back when Shan and Raquel met each other back at Vic’s?”

“Nope,” he said, thinking how cute Bridget was. He wondered whether he would be able to spend some time with her at the reception. Maybe he could sit next to her on the plane?

***

Shan walked out and took his place where Amy had told him to stand. He glanced over at Ryan who gave him a slight wink. They were out on the huge patio of the main house on the island. The setting sun cast a lustrous, gilded light over everything. As predicted, the temperature had hit 86 about thirty minutes ago, but Roger, Ryan and he were all wearing cool, tropical linen shirts and pants. The linen was black—to give it a formal air, Amy said—but because of its tendency to wrinkle they hadn’t been allowed to sit once they put them on which he found surprisingly annoying. The sea breeze cooled them enough that it didn’t actually seem uncomfortable.

He looked out over the audience. Shan’s aunts and uncles and most of his first cousins were there. Most of his distant relatives had balked at the whole destination wedding idea, but there were still quite a few people present. Ell’s Mom and Gram, wearing wigs and slight facial disguises, sat in the front row with Miles Duncan, her mom’s boyfriend.

An island reggae band played Lucky Dube’s Romeo, one of Ell’s favorites, as Emma walked out to take her place across from Shan.

A little commotion stirred and the band faded Romeo out. The steel drummer began rolling his sticks. Out of the long roll he began to pick out the notes of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

Everyone turned to watch as Raquel appeared in the door of the big house and walked out. She wore a simple and lightweight dress that emphasized her slender figure.

She looked amazing.

Ryan whispered, “You lucky dog!”

Once she stood beside him, Shan turned to face Roger who had gotten himself licensed to perform marriages just so he could do this ceremony. Surprised, Shan saw a tear trickling down Roger’s cheek. Why is Roger getting so emotional?

With a croak Roger began a brief but elegant and heartfelt wedding ceremony.

Sitting at the head table for the reception Ell motioned to Shan and Emma to lean closer. “Of course, just as I was getting ready to walk out for the most important moment of my life,” she kissed Shan on the cheek, “Allan tells me that Sigwald has finally seen something other than fields of crops. He’s come on another one of those construction shacks.”

“Of course,” Emma giggled, “perfect timing. Did he encounter any sigmas?”

Ell lifted an eyebrow. “I told him to stop and park a few fields away.” She put her hand on her chest, “I… am busy!”

Shan grinned, “You’re letting a wedding interrupt an interstellar encounter?”

Ell drew her head back with a look of astonishment, “This wedding? Of course!”

Ryan stood and gently banged a fork against his glass to get the attention of the people at the reception. When they had turned his way he said, “I know that you’re expecting a ‘best man’s’ toast at this point. Instead, I’m afraid, it falls on me to attempt to rescue Raquel from this misguided union before it’s entirely too late.” He grinned broadly at the group, “I waited for Roger to say ‘should any person know why this man and woman should not be joined’ during the ceremony… but, sadly, he let me down.”

The audience tittered nervously and Ryan turned to look Raquel in the eye. “Raquel, I’ve been trying to bring you to your senses since you first started hanging out with that dufus sitting next to you. As you know I’ve had to live with Shan for six long years now. I know that you’ve assumed that I live with Shan because he and I are friends, but actually I live there because someone has to take care of the boy. Believe me Raquel, you really don’t want to take on that chore.

“At first I thought you’d figure out for yourself that Shan was playing with only a half a… make that a quarter of a deck.” He glanced at Shan, “maybe an eighth.” Ryan paused for a more comfortable giggle from his audience. “When you didn’t tumble to it on your own, I tried to help you realize his actual cognitive status by ‘accidentally’ letting you see some pictures of him in grade school. You didn’t seem to recognize that Shan was the only kid shaving in third grade.” Again Ryan paused for a little burst of laughter. “Then I showed you pictures of him getting on that short little bus he rode to school.”

Ryan turned to his audience with a mournful look, “Raquel just doesn’t take hints very well.” He turned back to her, “So now I’m going to spell it out for you. Raquel, he’s d-u-m-b.” Ryan turned back to the crowd, “Don’t worry about me hurting Shan’s feelings. He can’t spell big words like that.”

He turned back to Raquel who was snorting with laughter. As Shan rolled his eyes, Ryan said, “Now I know you’re thinking that everyone says Shan’s,” Ryan made finger quotes, “good at math… I have two words for you… ‘idiot-savant.’” Ryan had to pause again for laughter. “Raquel, as long as he’s got someone like me to wipe the drool off his chin, he can appear to be pretty smart about ‘rithmetic. Even Donsaii thought Shan was pretty smart ‘cause he noticed that the decimals got wonky in her math after a lot of light years. But, Raquel honey, she wouldn’t have been impressed if she’d known I had to help him get dressed that morning!”

Ryan turned back to the little crowd. “All kidding aside, Shan only has one true love… basketball.” Ryan paused for another round of chuckles. “He and I play in a three man league. This year Shan actually made a couple of shots. We even won some games… when his girlfriend showed up… and subbed in for him.”

Ryan looked at Raquel a moment, then turned back to his audience and sighed, “Ah well folks, Cupid’s arrow struck deep. I can see she still loves him despite my incessantly pointing out of his innumerable flaws.” He turned back to Raquel, “Just remember, Raquel, when you do come to your senses, you can have the ‘best’ man,” Ryan theatrically placed his hand on his chest, “whenever you want. You wouldn’t even have to deal with a divorce. Remember, the man’s about as smart as a pound of pebbles… you can just tell him the ‘marriage came undone…’ send him out to empty the trash… and move out before he finds his way back into the house. ”

Ryan raised his glass to the group, “Until then my friends, raise your glasses in a toast,

We wish this joyous pair

Endless love and blissful care.

He clinked his glass with Shan and Raquel’s as the group said, “Hear, hear.”

Among the other toasts that evening was an announcement by Ell’s Gram that she was sending them on a honeymoon to Venice, Italy, “the most romantic place I’ve ever been.”

Ryan looked around at the people celebrating Shan’s marriage. Most of them were Shan’s close relatives. He’d been surprised that Roger Emmerit and Emma Kenner not only came but participated in the wedding. They were pretty big names at D5R and he’d had no idea they even knew who Raquel was. He worked with them fairly often and had never even seen Raquel down in that area. In fact when Ryan asked what Raquel did there at D5R, no one really seemed to know. She spent most of her time away from the main facility on various assignments and a lot of people thought she was some kind of trouble shooter for Donsaii. Hearing this Ryan had wondered if even Donsaii and her reclusive boyfriend might show up at the wedding, but it appeared that Roger and Emma were as high in D5R’s hierarchy as Raquel reached.

He saw Bridget starting to dance. The girl looked good and she was dancing by herself! After a moment he strode out to her. He waggled his eyebrows at her, “Need a partner?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

***

Shan and Ell had the tiny little bungalow down at the end of D5R’s island for their “honeymoon suite.” After the reception wound down they took a little jeep down to it. Ell bounced up the steps to the small porch and stood looking out over the moonlit sea. Shan walked over and leaned up against the rail beside her. “Paradise huh?”

Ell turned to him and slid her arms up around his neck. Smiling up at him she said, “Anyplace with you… anyplace with you.” She lifted her lips to his.

When they broke free she grinned up at him and lifted an eyebrow, “So you going to take me inside?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Shan turned and walked to the door holding it open for her.

Ell stepped up next to it and peered inside.

“You afraid somebody booby-trapped it?”

“No,” she whispered, “just waiting for my big strong man to carry me over the threshold.”

With a snort Shan picked up his bride and carried her in…

At six in the morning Shan woke from the sleep of the righteously exhausted, thinking how… he would never have believed a night could be that wonderful. He reached out to Ell’s side of the bed. She wasn’t there!

Raising his head he peered over that way. Ell sat in a chair drawn up next to her side of the bed. Gazing up into the lights of her HUD she was murmuring something. He heard her say “Sigwald,” but couldn’t understand the rest.

Her eyes glanced his way and widened. “You’re awake lazy bones?!”

Shan nodded.

“You ready to fulfill your husbandly duties to your new wife?”

Shan laughed, “Girl, you’re gonna wear me out!”

She pulled off her head band and leapt onto the bed, “I’m gonna try!”

Over a breakfast of big slabs of crunchy, citrus flavored French toast Shan said, “So, are you going to tell me what’s happening with Sigwald?”

Ell frowned at him, “You’ve got a headband, why haven’t you checked it out for yourself?”

He laughed, “I’m but an ordinary human. I must sleep sometimes,” he raised an eyebrow, “unlike the she-demon I married.”

Ell smirked at him, “Such weakness… pitiful. I had Sigwald approach the construction building,” she glanced up, “machine shop? I’m not sure what to call it. Anyway it looks exactly like the one where we met Keenar. You might be right when you say that the sigmas are kinda boring. At any rate, Sigwald went to it this morning but there weren’t any sigmas there. I think they have off shift periods. Remember how Querlak and Keenar sometimes took us away from the one Keenar worked at without much explanation?”

Shan nodded. “I thought they slept then?”

“I have a feeling it was also ‘cause they didn’t want us there during the ‘on shift’ to encounter any of the other sigmas. Trying to keep Sigwald to themselves?”

Thoughtfully Shan gave a little nod, “I can see that being the reason.”

“Oh.” Ell looked up at her HUD. “Here come some sigmas.”

Shan looked up at his HUD and saw a gaggle of sigmas approaching. Most of them appeared… dull to him. They weren’t as animated as he’d been used to seeing with Querlak and Keenar. In fact, they saw Sigwald and barely reacted, proceeding on into the building with little notice. However, two of the sigmas reacted much differently, one leaping far to the side and flapping its wings a few beats as if tremendously startled or shocked. The kind of reaction one might expect someone to evince upon encountering an alien.

The other sigma turned toward Sigwald and focused its big eye on him. Though he tried not to attribute human emotions to an alien for which their understanding of body language was limited at best, Shan’s impression was that this sigma exhibited no more than mild surprise. Shan had the impression he had had before of a sigma sort of ‘inflating’ as if something suddenly filled it with more purpose and intelligence. Then it said in English, “Hello Sigwald.”

Shan felt a shock run down his spine. He didn’t think he should be able to recognize sigmas with surety, nonetheless Shan felt certain this sigma was neither Querlak nor Keenar. Shan glanced at Ell. She murmured a moment and Shan heard Sigwald say. “Hello, who you and how learn my language?” Then Sigwald said something in the sigmas language, presumably a translation.

“I Keldap, of Keenar and Querlak’s clade.”

Shan’s eyes widened. Ell had told him how members of a clade were connected through the 5th dimension. Perhaps through quantum entangled molecules separated at birth? Ell said, “Have Sigwald say, ‘I thought Keenar and Querlak were from different clades?’”

Allan said, “Saying, ‘I thought Keenar and Querlak different clades?’”

Keldap had been speaking loudly in their language to the other sigma. Again guessing about their body language Shan had the feeling that the other sigma was very upset, but after a moment it turned and went in the building leaving Keldap there with Sigwald. Keldap turned to Sigwald, “Same clade now.”

Allan said “Keldap told the other sigma to go in and get the work started.”

Ell said to Allan, “Say again that we thought that Keenar and Querlak were from different clades?”

Allan said, “Saying, ‘I think Keenar, Querlak not of same clade?’”

“Clades now joined. Person in Keenar clade, join with person in Querlak clade. Make new sigma. Join clades.”

Startled, Shan turned to Ell, “Do you think that people in the two clades mated just to join the clades because of Sigwald?”

Ell shrugged, “Allan, ask why those other sigmas in the repair center weren’t interested in Sigwald?”

After Ell’s words had been translated to Keldap he replied, “Bad sigmas. Go ringworld through port. Go through port make not smart,” Keldap swung his lower manipulators in a shrug, “so not notice you. You tell how go stars now?”

Ell sighed, “I wonder if he’s saying that going through a port has the same effect on them that it does on our test animals here? You know, how it seems to reduce their intelligence?”

“It sounded that way to me.”

Ell shrugged, “Allan, “Tell them we still don’t know how to travel to the stars.”

After Allan translated, Keldap began speaking loudly in the sigman language.

Despite now being no more than a minor cog in Keenar’s huge Delnitch clade, Querlak felt horror wash over her as the TS she was a part of decided to capture Sigwald. She tried to apply pressure against the decision from within the TS but there were too many Delnitch in the TS, used to demanding, and strong-arming to get their way. Her pressure achieved nothing.

Keldap called out to Gesdin inside the repair shed to bring out some convicts with graphene straps. Keldap spoke rapidly, evidently in hopes that Sigwald wouldn’t be able to understand. It seemed that the strategy worked because Sigwald stood stolidly in place, saying, “I sorry I cannot tell stars. You want other knowledge?”

“No! Stars!” Keldap shouted as Gesdin dropped a long graphene strap over Sigwald, cinching it quickly around the midpoint of his arms. Sigwald struggled to fly away on the jets under his feet but Gesdin had a number of the convicts holding onto the strap and the end of the strap had already been attached to the graphend wall of the repair center—which, of course, was bonded directly to the ring’s graphend. More of the convicts appeared and applied more straps around Sigwald’s feet, knees and hands.

Although Sigwald proved to be astonishingly strong, he could not, of course, break graphene straps. Nor escape from them.

Keldap had Sigwald carried into the building. He proved to be quite heavy so they had to get a dolly to move him. Keldap had the straps bonded to the wall of the building so there would be no chance of escape. He stepped in front of Sigwald and said, “You ready say how go stars now?”

Sigwald stood motionless and did not react. Querlak had the feeling that being strapped motionless didn’t bother Sigwald. It would drive a sigma insane, but perhaps the sigwald people weren’t affected the same way?

Keldap had been expectantly watching Sigwald. Through her link Querlak knew he awaited a frantic reaction to this imprisonment. When no such a reaction appeared he said, using Querlak’s English words, “You say how go stars! We not let you move before you say!” He turned and returned to his tasks as the master of repairs at the station, releasing Querlak from the TS.

Ell said, “Allan, don’t have Sigwald say anything, just stand and watch. We’ll see if we can outwait Keldap. Let me know if they do anything to harm Sigwald, otherwise just record what happens in his visual field. You can turn his head to track things that are interesting but otherwise don’t try to break free.” She turned to Shan, “I wouldn’t mind a break from following things on the ringworld. It’s been pretty boring.” She raised an eyebrow, “Except for what they can do with carbon allotropes of course.”

“Boring but anxiety producing. Aren’t you worried about what might happen if the sigmas somehow figure out how to get back to earth? They aren’t exactly sweetness and light. While they aren’t that far ahead of us in a lot of areas and are behind us in some I don’t think we want them escaping from their own solar system.”

“Yeah, I’m worried sick just about the fact that we’ve made it obvious to them that it is possible to travel between the stars. Maybe that’s all they’ll need to connect up a whole lot of sigmas into some kind of super-genius that will figure out how to get here. Before we got to know them, I’d been assuming that if they could build the ringworld, they’d be way ahead of us in everything and would therefore already know how to get to the stars.”

“Is there any way for us to keep them from figuring it out?”

Ell shrugged. “There aren’t any one way ports on Sigwald for them to reverse engineer and the one-ways are really different from the two ways. I’m hoping that, even if they realize that one-ways must exist and that one-ways were how we got to Sigma Draconis, they won’t ever figure out how to make a one way. There was a huge amount of serendipity involved in figuring out either type of port. I’m counting on the fact that they had their own biological example of a two ended connection through the 5th dimension. Maybe that example let them figure out two way ports, but that without such an example of one ways, they won’t tumble to it.”

Ell sighed, “But, I am still worried. I hope that, after a while they might stop demanding the stars and accept that we should trade other knowledge for the huge value it has to both of our civilizations.”

Shan shrugged, “OK, let’s try to wait them out. No reason Sigwald can’t be patient.”

Chapter Seven

Ell and Amy were unpacking a couple of boxes in ‘Raquel’s’ new house when they heard a knock on the open doorframe. A lady stood in the door. “Hello neighbors,” she said. “I brought you some ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ cookies.”

Ell got up, wiping her hands on her pants as she walked over, “Come on in. I’m Raquel Blandon and this is my friend Amy Reston,” she waved Amy’s direction, “who’s being kind enough to help me unpack.” Ell peeled the cover off the container of chocolate chip cookies. “Oh! These smell great! Amy, come take a break.” Taking a cookie, Ell held the container out to their guest, “Won’t you have one, Ms.…?”

“Oh! Goodness, sorry I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Ruth, Ruth Sparlock. I live in the house next door,” she jerked a thumb, “with my husband Jack and two little girls.” She plucked up a cookie and nibbled at it.

Amy took a cookie too.

Ell said, “Ruth, won’t you sit down and tell us about the neighborhood?”

Looking delighted to gossip, Ruth sat on Shan’s overstuffed chair. “I’ve only lived here a few years, but it’s pretty nice. All the houses seem to be young families except Elsa James across the street who’s in her eighties and two houses that have several young people living as roommates.” Ruth pointed in the general direction of the two houses that Ell’s security team members lived in. “We don’t see Ms. James very often but the roommates that I’ve met seem very nice.”

Ell said, “Does the neighborhood ever get together? I’ve heard that neighborhoods where everyone knows each other have fewer crime problems. Social events are supposed to help bring camaraderie.”

Ruth raised an eyebrow, “Like a block party? That sounds like fun.” She said, “Maybe we could even invite your neighbor over the fence.” She jerked her head towards Ell’s farm.

Ell frowned, wondering where this might be going. “The folks on the farm out back? Are they friendly?”

Round eyed, Ruth said, “Your real estate agent didn’t tell you? Ell Donsaii lives on that little farm!”

Ell did her best to look surprised, “Really?! Do you think she’d come to a block party?”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know.” She waggled her eyebrows and grinned, “But we could send her an invite.”

Ruth eventually finished giving Ell the dirt she had on the folks in the neighborhood and left, promising to plan a block party. After the door closed Amy threw her head back on the couch and laughed. “You’re going to get her to invite you as Ell!? You can’t come as Ell and as Raquel you know.”

“Sure I can,” Ell sniffed and lifted her nose, “just not at the same time.”

***

Viveka stood red eyed and watched the small crowd gathered for her father’s funeral. Having grown used to wearing western clothing in Delhi, she felt uncomfortable wearing the langhati—or two piece sari—her mother had borrowed for her. She didn’t really know most of the people who had gathered, though many of them told her they remembered her from when she was a child.

The people danced and beat drums as they normally did for funerals. Some of the men drank excessively which Viveka found repugnant. She knew that men commonly drank to excess at funerals, but to her it felt disrespectful. Her father had seldom partaken of alcohol and she felt like the drinking at his funeral ceremony would have offended him.

Viveka stiffened as she heard her Aunty behind her, “What will you do with Viveka now?”

Her mother replied desolately, “I don’t know.”

“Well, if you couldn’t afford a dowry before, you certainly won’t be able to muster one now.”

“I’m not worried about a dowry yet. She wants to finish her last year of schooling.”

“You can’t afford that either! The way your cousin has been gouging you to keep her in Delhi is a crime.”

Viveka closed her eyes in despair. So far she’d only thought about the loss of her father. She hadn’t considered what it meant to her own future. She’d dreamed of one day making enough money to recompense her family for the sacrifices they’d made sending her to Delhi. She’d never pay back her father now. If she couldn’t graduate, she probably wouldn’t be able to pay back her mother either.

Her mother said, “I know I can’t afford it. But I think you are wrong about Moman. She wouldn’t charge me unfairly, we grew up together. Perhaps… perhaps Moman will keep Viveka this one more year, allowing Viveka to pay her back once she has a job.” Viveka’s mother said this without conviction.

“Ha!” Viveka’s aunty barked, “Fat chance of that! Moman gouges everyone when it comes to money.”

“Maybe… Viveka could work… or get a loan?”

“Viveka’s already working as a maid for your cousin. I’ve asked around. In the city, someone who cooks and cleans like Viveka shouldn’t have to pay for their room. But as many hours as she puts in as a maid, she surely doesn’t have time to work another job and go to school.”

Viveka’s eyes widened. If that were true…? Perhaps she could work as a maid for someone else, getting room and board without paying extra? She’d never considered the possibility… Her mother and aunty moved out of earshot and one of the men Viveka’s fathers had worked with came to pay his respects. Viveka felt absurdly glad that this one wasn’t drunk.

***

Ell looked around the table at D5R’s leaders. They were mostly people who’d been there when she started the company. They were also the people who were now leading D5R’s subsidiaries. They’d finished everything else on their agenda. She cleared her throat, “So, I’m going to be taking a long vacation this summer.”

Ben’s head shot around with a dismayed look on his face. “How long? When?!”

To her surprise, many of the others looked worried too. Ell said, “Five weeks, mid-July to mid-August. Don’t look so shocked… just because I hadn’t taken a vacation so far didn’t mean I never would.”

“But, but…”

“But, you guys don’t need me. You’ll just keep doing what you do and doing it brilliantly. If you really need me, you can always reach me.”

“Are D5R’s investors OK with this?” Fred asked, a furrow between his brows.

“Yeah,” she grinned, “they think I need a vacation too.”

Ben snorted, “I’m trying to keep in mind that a few years ago… I thought the last thing I needed was an underage CEO telling me how to do my job.” He looked around the table and shook his head mournfully, “Now I’m worried about what we’re gonna do without her around here spewing crazy ideas…”

***

Viveka alighted from the bus feeling exhausted. Her aunty had found a young man going to Delhi for Viveka to ride with which had at first relieved her trepidation about riding the bus alone. But it had proven that the young man had heard that all the women from Delhi had loose morals. Only a few minutes into the long ride he’d begun speaking suggestively to her.

Fortunately, verbal dissuasion had been all that had been required to stop him. Nonetheless, Viveka had slept poorly. Any swaying of the bus that bumped their legs together woke her with her heart in her throat. She set out to walk to Moman’s house carrying her little bag.

Moman opened the door, “Viveka? I heard about your father. You poor girl! Without your papa I didn’t think you’d be able to afford to come back to Delhi?”

Staring at her shoes Viveka whispered, “I can’t.”

“My goodness girl,” Moman said, “then what are you doing here? You’ll just make your situation worse.”

“I hoped you would let me stay a few days while I look for a cheaper place to stay.” Moman said nothing for a few moments so Viveka finally looked up to see her face.

Moman’s expression couldn’t be interpreted, but she said, “I’m not running a charity here you know?”

Viveka nodded, “Only a few days?”

With a sigh Moman said, “OK, three days. But you’ll need to do your chores.”

Viveka nodded and followed Moman inside. Glancing about she realized that nothing had been cleaned or straightened since the day she left two weeks ago. She looked at Moman who glanced about without embarrassment, “As you can see, there’s a lot to do. Please get the laundry done before you go to bed, we’re running out of clean clothes.” Moman turned toward the room where she watched her vids.

With a sigh Viveka carried her bag to the laundry room where the cot Viveka slept on had been located. With slumped shoulders she saw that her cot been taken down and would need to be reassembled.

A little after midnight, the laundry done and kitchen cleaned, Viveka slipped into the room where Moman’s husband Alagan kept his computer. An older model, it still outstripped Viveka’s resources which consisted of the minimal net connection she could make on her prepaid phone. Her phone would provide virtually no net access before its prepay ran out. Booting up the computer, she began to look for jobs, or at least for room and board. To her surprise she found several ads looking for someone to clean and cook breakfast as she had been doing for Moman. Room and board and often a small salary were provided, rather than costing money.

Her heart rose and she went to bed filled with hope.

In the morning Viveka got up early to make poori for the family’s breakfast. Alagan came in, “Viveka! I was very sorry to hear about your father but it’s good to see you girl.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially, “Breakfast has been terrible while you were gone.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation, “I love your poori.”

Viveka passed him a poori and he bit into it happily. “Will you be staying? Moman said you might not be able to afford to continue school?” He frowned, “I thought you had a scholarship?”

“I do, but without Papa, I can no longer afford to pay for my room and board here.”

Alagan frowned again, “I thought you cleaned and cooked breakfast for your room and board?”

“Alagan,” Moman said imperiously as she swept into the kitchen, “don’t try to get involved in the running of the household.” She sat and turned to Viveka, “Pass me the poori.” When Viveka had handed her a plate with several poori she sniffed and said, “You used too much oil.”

Alagan drew his head back. “That’s the way I like them. These are perfect!” He turned to Viveka, “Make a couple more, I’ll take them for my lunch.”

Viveka finished cleaning the house in the morning and then snuck into the computer room to check for responses to the queries she’d made. Two of them had responded! They wanted to interview her.

“What are you doing in here?!”

Moman stood at the door. “Using the computer to look for jobs,” Viveka said in a small voice.

“I thought you used the computers at your school?”

“Normally I do, but they’re not available when school’s not in session. Your husband said I could…”

“Alagan doesn’t run this household. I do. You should ask me!”

“Yes Ma’am.” Viveka said with downcast eyes.

“Turn it off.”

“Yes Ma’am.” Viveka said quickly looking at the two phone numbers and committing them to memory as she reached to shut it down.

“I need you to go to market.” Moman held out a list.

Viveka took the list, turned it over and wrote the two numbers down. Marketing hadn’t been one of her tasks in the past.

“What are you doing? Don’t be adding your own items to our list.”

“No Ma’am.” Viveka raised her eyes to Moman’s, hoping her hatred didn’t show through them.

“On your way then.”

Viveka didn’t take her eyes away from Moman’s, “I’ll need money.”

“Nonsense. Bring me the receipt and I’ll repay you.” She shrugged, “Actually, you should buy these groceries to recompense us for your room these three nights.”

“I don’t have enough money Moman,” Viveka said, waving the pencil at the list without looking away from Moman’s eyes. She half expected Moman to demand to see the bottom of her empty wallet.

Moman sighed exasperatedly, “OK, I’ll get you money. I’ll expect receipts and change.”

Once out of the house Viveka called the two phone numbers, hoping against hope that she could finish arranging interviews before the few minutes she had left on her phone ran out.

Hanging up from the second call she saw with dismay that she only had thirty seconds of time left on her phone. But she did have two appointments, one in thirty minutes and the other in two hours. If only she could find both of them afoot without too much trouble.

The door opened on a dour woman who looked Viveka up and down. “You’re looking for the housekeeping position?”

Viveka nodded.

The woman sniffed, “Why aren’t you wearing a sari?”

“I’m a student at IIT and don’t have any saris any more.”

The woman rolled her eyes and didn’t invite Viveka inside. “I need someone with a flexible schedule. Students are always having to attend class. Give me your number, I might call you back.”

Dismayed Viveka gave the woman the number to her mobile, hoping she didn’t call when Viveka had so few minutes available. She memorized the woman’s number so she could recognize it and avoid answering unless desperate, then turned her phone off to be sure.

At the next house a cheerful woman in her late twenties opened the door with a little girl on her hip. “Hi! You’re Viveka?”

Viveka nodded, a tentative smile on her own lips as the little girl hid her face.

“Come in, come in! Let me show you around.” Viveka followed the smiling woman about the house. The family had an entire empty room that Viveka could live in. The room was small but, so much better than living on a cot in the laundry! They couldn’t afford to pay much beyond room and board but only wanted Viveka to clean and straighten in the evenings after the children were in bed. She would do one load of laundry each evening and cook breakfast five days a week.

To Viveka’s astonishment, she wouldn’t be expected to do errands unless paid extra and wasn’t expected to provide childcare more than one evening a week, and then only if the parents went out.

She could use their computer if the family wasn’t using it and would have her days free to attend class!

Before she left, they’d signed an agreement for Viveka to start the next day.

Viveka left for the market in a buoyant mood.

She started back to Moman’s house in a foul temper, having been groped twice while shopping. She daydreamed of vengeance on the walk back from the market. If only there was a way to teach those men a lesson?

Perhaps spraying them with cheap perfume for their wives to smell when they got home? She retired that idea on the realization that such a man would likely take his own vengeance on her when she assaulted him with the perfume.

Viveka raised an eyebrow over a new concept. She could apply sticky signs to their backs! “I groped a woman today,” the signs would say. They could be applied gently without the man even knowing. She imagined him getting home to his wife with the sign still in place. She raised an eyebrow, maybe I could sell the signs to other women and start a revolution?

As she opened the back door to Moman’s house, Moman’s shrill voice grated on Viveka’s ears. “All afternoon for a trip to the market! And you aren’t answering your mobile! I had to make dinner without rice.” As Viveka set them down Moman peered into the bags, “Where’s the rice? You didn’t get rice?!”

Viveka gritted her teeth, “You didn’t give me enough money to get all these items and the rice also.”

Moman’s eyes widened, “And you couldn’t use your own money, even for a little rice?!”

Viveka narrowed her eyes, “Moman, I have forty rupees. That’s all. The change for your items without the rice was fifteen rupees.  Fifty five rupees wouldn’t buy even the smallest rice.”

“You’ll just have to go again after dinner.”

“I won’t. It’s not safe.”

“Pssh, it’s fine.” She raised an eyebrow, “You’ll go after dinner if you want to stay here.”

Alagan had been staring at them over his dinner. “Moman, I agree with Viveka, it isn’t safe for a young girl at the market after dark.”

With some satisfaction Viveka said, “It’s OK, I’m not staying here anyway.”

Alagan looked horrified. Moman narrowed her eyes, “Where are you staying?!”

“I’ve found a family to stay with. I’ll have a room instead of sleeping in the laundry. I’ll do less work than here. They’ll pay me, instead of my family having to pay them.”

Moman hissed, “What? Are you going to whore yourself to the husband?”

“No!” Viveka said, hatred in her eyes.

“Why are they paying you then?”

“It turns out that normal people do pay their housekeepers, Moman. I am so sorry for my family that I never thought to look into this before.” Disgust and loathing on her face, Viveka said, “You must feel very proud Moman, using your cousin’s child as a housekeeper and charging her family for the privilege. I don’t wish you luck finding another fool to dupe.”

Alagan turned wide eyed to Moman, “You’re charging her to stay here?”

Tears pouring down her face Viveka turned and went to the laundry to collect her meager belongings. I can’t believe that I went to the market for that woman after realizing what she has been doing to my family for years! I am such a fool! Always trying to be so nice. Never looking out for myself.

Or for my family, she thought with disgust, lifting her bag and turning to the door.

“Viveka!” Alagan said behind her, “Surely you aren’t going out at night!”

Huddled fearfully at the door Viveka sniffed and nodded. Voice cracking she said, “I can’t stay here.”

“You can.”

“I won’t.”

Alagan looked at her sadly for a minute and then said, “OK then, I’ll go with you and we’ll take a taxi. I’ll stay until we’re sure they will take you in tonight.

True to his word Alagan went with her and even had the taxi stop at a street vendor where he bought Viveka some chaat for dinner. Then he stayed until he could be sure her new family had taken her in. Before he left, he pressed a bundle of rupees into her hand and said, “If something happens, come back. If I had known that Moman was charging you I would have put a stop to it years ago.”

Viveka nodded, a frog in her throat. She felt immensely grateful to have a backup place to live and a little money to start her new life.

***

As Keldap stalked in to see Sigwald, Querlak found herself pulled into TS with Keldap again. Her point of view moved around as Keldap examined Sigwald from all sides, wondering at the fact that Sigwald didn’t seem to have changed at all in the weeks since they had bound him to the wall of the repair shed. They had expected a frenzied response to the immobilization but such a response hadn’t evinced itself.

Sigwald hadn’t even asked for food, which Querlak thought must mean that Sigwald was a robot.

Finally Keldap said, “Are you ready to tell us how to get to the stars?”

As he had several times in the past few weeks, Sigwald said only, “No,”

Keldap’s temper boiled up and for a moment Querlak thought he would do Sigwald some harm. But a push from the TS calmed him. The TS had concluded that it had no reason to rush. Sigwald couldn’t go anywhere. Rather than trying to harm Sigwald, imprisoning him until he broke from hunger or boredom would be the best strategy. Eventually and reluctantly Keldap said, “We can afford to wait a very long time. You will tell us eventually.”

Querlak wondered to herself if that were true. The rest of the TS hadn’t seemed to take any notice of her observation that Sigwald hadn’t eaten and what that might mean. Although such immobilization would break a sigma, if Sigwald was a robot he might have almost infinite patience. Then the TS dropped away and Querlak lost the processing power she had been using. As her intelligence dropped, so did her interest in the question.

***

Andrea guided the young couple up the steps to one of her rental properties. “You are making the honeymoon?” she asked, using her own English.

“Yes,” the pretty young woman said. “Though our wedding was actually in May. We had some other things going on then, so July was a better time to get away.”

Andrea glanced admiringly at the young woman’s tousled blond and oh so handsome husband. “Well, here. Now you see this is your little apartment. The room with the bed is in there… Here I show you… over here is small kitchen. I can show you a small market if you want buy food. But, Venice is famous for its cafés and restaurants. Is easy eating out all the time here.”

“We’ll probably eat out most of the time but we don’t speak much Italian. Do the people here accept AI translation?”

“Oh, don’t be worried. Most of the selling people speak fair well English. Those who not, they not complain about AI translation.” Andrea knew that there were always a few people who would be rude to tourists who didn’t speak Italian. But, competition to sell had been slowly driving those people out of the tourist businesses for years. Most sales people gratefully used AI translation nowadays. Andrea tried to use her own English because she hoped it provided a personal touch, though she felt pretty sure that people would understand her better if she just spoke her native Italian and let her guests’ AIs translate her words for them.

Once Andrea had shown them the rest of the features of the small apartment they had rented for the next several weeks she took them back out to the street. “I point out some features of the neighborhood?”

“Oh, yes please.”

Andrea showed them to the nearby Campo Santo Stefano. From there she gave them general directions to the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, to the Galleria D’Arte Contini, and the Fiorella Gallery as well as pointing out her favorite cafés and shopping. She put a hand on Ell’s arm, “A caution?”

Ell frowned, “Yes?”

“Is safe here but…” at this point she launched into Italian which Allan translated for Ell. “Recently there have been some… young hooligans stealing packages. You may know that in the past there were criminals called pickpockets. When people carried actual money they would take your wallet surreptitiously without your notice. Now that almost everyone is using digital money, at least here, those kinds of people are taking things you bought. They watch shoppers. If they see you buy something expensive, then they bump into you and snatch the bag or package from your hands. They are gone very quickly. Sometimes they are able to take it without you even knowing it’s gone, like a pickpocket used to work. Other times, you know it’s gone but they are vanished around a corner and you cannot catch them. Because they usually are able to do this so the victim’s AI doesn’t see their faces, the police haven’t been able to catch them yet.” She shrugged, “Even if your AI, or a friend’s records them, they wear hats and disguise their faces… So I am warning you, if you buy expensive items? Protect those packages.”

Ell shrugged, “OK.”

Andrea looked at Shan, “She not worried?”

He grinned and raised an eyebrow, “No, but I don’t think they’ll get anything from ‘Raquel.’”

Shan rolled over on the bed. Bright light poured in the window hurting his eyes. Squinting he looked around.

Ell sat across the room in front of a schematic on the room’s big screen. “Hey sleepy head.” She grinned at him, “That thar big bad jet lag knock you on your ass?”

“Jeez!” he grumbled, “I feel hung over! Why are there bright lights outside the window?”

“Those lights,” she giggled, “are our friend the sun. It’s nine AM here in Venice.”

“Aw man, what time is it back home?” he asked, eyes squinched shut.

“Three AM.”

“So, when we went to bed at…?”

“One AM last night.”

“It was…?”

“Seven PM back home. But you were all tired out ‘cause you didn’t sleep very well on the flight over.”

“Arggh! I thought all those people who complained about jet lag were a bunch of wussies.”

Ell snorted, “They are… And you’re one of ‘em boyo. You need to get your butt up or you’re never gonna get onto Italian time!”

“Hey!” Shan glared at her with one eye held partly open. “I thought you were supposed to be sweet and loving on our honeymoon?”

Ell laughed again, “I thought you were supposed to sweep me off my feet and entertain me, not lay around in bed like a lump of lard!”

“OK, OK. I’ll sweep, I’ll sweep,” Shan said, getting out of bed. “Let me take a shower.” He squinted at Ell again, “How come you look so fresh?”

“‘Cause I’m stalwart and non-wussy,” she grinned at him.

“Now I’m starving,” Shan said as they got to the bottom of the stairs leading out of their little apartment. “We just going to the first café we see?”

“Oh, no. We came all this way, we’re going to eat at Caffé Florian.”

Shan put on his sunglasses, “What’s so special about it?”

“It’s been open since 1720! It’s a coffee house that’s older than the United States!”

“Is it close?”

“Less than a kilometer.”

“We can’t just stop at this little café here?”

“Hey, we came all the way to Venice. We’re gonna steep ourselves in culture and history, even if it kills us. Turn left up here.”

Shan’s eyebrows rose, “Holy crap! Look at these prices!”

Ell smiled at him, “And… they just charged us each ten bucks just to sit down. Pays for the string quartet.” She pointed over to the live musicians.

Shan looked that way. He’d thought the music was recorded. “But, did you see that a coffee is nine euros?!”

Ell winked at him, “You think we’ll have to cut back on something else?”

Shan snorted, “I guess you can afford it. But I’m just a poor boy… not used to livin’ high on the hog like this. Havin’ a little sticker shock.”

“Well don’t get used to it. We can’t live expensive back home… But we can here so if we’re ever going to splurge, this is a good time and place.”

“So… I just close my eyes and order whatever I want?”

“Yep. Knock yourself out handsome.”

Wandering away from the Peggy Guggenheim museum, Ell turned to Shan, “Some of the modern pieces in there really touched me. I loved Brancusi’s “Bird in Space.’ Others didn’t even seem like they were really even art. More like laughably poor attempts to create art by people who had absolutely no talent. Yet… someone must think they are art or they wouldn’t be there.”

Shan shook his head. “I felt the same way visiting the National Gallery in Washington. ‘Art’ truly is ‘in the eye of the beholder’ I guess.” Suddenly he realized that Ell wasn’t beside him any longer. He turned and found her standing stock still on the street, staring into the window of a small gallery. “Ell?”

She just put her palm up to him in the universal “wait” gesture.

Shan turned and walked back to see what had entranced her. “Is it the blue on white canvas?”

Ell nodded.

He looked at it. A long vertical rectangle of brilliant white canvas hung in a somewhat dim corner of the gallery. However, at the moment a shaft of sunlight through a high window shot into the gallery and vibrantly lit that particular piece.

A splash of brilliant blue struck from near the upper left corner and exploded down across the canvas toward the lower right. To be honest, it looked somewhat like someone had spilled paint on the canvas. It even had spatters where the color appeared to first have struck and splashed. However, the blue wasn’t all the same shade. Someone had actually spent time working to make it look like a spill, yet had turned it into a work of art. Shan assumed Ell thought it to be art anyway. And the more Shan stared at it, the more he liked it as well.

Ell broke from her stasis and went to the door of the gallery, opening it and starting inside. As she entered she glanced back at Shan, “Do you like it?”

Wordlessly, he nodded.

They went to stand in front of the painting. It actually had a frozen little stream of paint coming up off the canvas as if someone were still pouring paint onto it. Some small splashes were frozen in the act of splattering up. Tiny white lines highlighted parts of the blue. Shan realized that someone had invested an enormous amount of time and talent into making this appear to be a spill… an ongoing spill… of surpassing beauty.

The shaft of sunlight had moved so that it only lit part of the painting. Still, the blues on the lighted part drew the eye.

A man came from behind them. He spoke in Italian but their AIs translated, “The blue… it is amazing, no?”

They nodded. Ell looked up at the ceiling, then around. She said, “Don’t you have any lights for it?”

The man ignored her question. When he spoke the translation said, “Unfortunately, we cannot make prints that have the same colors.”

“Don’t you have any lights for it?”

He shrugged, “There is only this original. It is very expensive.”

“Can-you-light-it?” Ell asked, sounding a little frustrated.

He waved at the ceiling, “No lights right now. We are preparing a new location with lights for it.”

“May we move it to somewhere where there is light?”

He looked them over again, then shrugged a little, apparently deciding it would be far out of their price range and a waste of his time. “Perhaps I could show you some prints of our other works? There are no prints of this one.”

Ell narrowed her eyes. “I don’t want a print. I believe that I want this painting. But, I want to see it lit first. Are you the owner of the gallery?”

With a sigh he began, “Bambina…” The translation that Allan provided of his words were, “Little girl, I am not the owner. But this is an original Leoni Mattioli and the gallery is asking forty thousand euros for it.”

Ell stared at him a moment, then said, “Do you work on commission here?”

He rolled his eyes exasperatedly but nodded.

Ell grinned, exaggeratedly rolling her eyes right back at him. She said, “I’m going to buy this painting. I’m not going to dicker over the price. I’m even going to tip the sales person. And… I’m going to buy it from that young lady over there,” she raised an eyebrow, “assuming she isn’t rude to me like you’ve been.”

Shan watched bemusedly as Ell walked over to a young woman who’d stepped around a corner. She smiled at the girl, “Do you work here?”

After a pause for her to get the translation the young woman nodded, a curious but mildly apprehensive look on her face.

“If you would do me the kindness of moving the blue Mattioli into better light, I will buy it from you for its asking price of forty thousand euros.”

Her eyes widened, “But… I thought you were working with Julio?”

“Julio didn’t want to move it for me.”

The young woman’s eyes darted to the man, “Julio?”

Shan saw the man looking a little pinched. He spoke rapidly and a moment later Allan translated, “Sophia, I cannot be moving high end works for every tourist that asks me to, especially when they cannot afford them.” He glanced disdainfully at Ell and he sniffed, “She does not have the money. She’s wasting your time.”

“But Julio, we aren’t busy right now,” the young woman said, frowning.

Julio waved his hand dismissively and walked away toward the back of the gallery. Sophia shrugged apologetically at Ell and stepped to the picture. She lifted it off the wall and carried it to a well-lit easel in the next room, apparently kept set up for just that purpose. Once in the light, the brilliant blues of the painting again struck a chord in Shan. It affected him so strongly that he simply stood and stared for a long period.

Eventually he turned to see what Ell thought. She and Sophia were speaking quietly in a corner while Sophia unscrewed a long flat wooden box. The girl looked happy, bordering on ecstatic.

A moment later Sophia came over and got the painting, taking it back and placing it in the box. She inserted foam protectors around it and placed a hard cover over them. She put a lid on the box, which appeared to have been designed either for this specific painting or for one of exactly its size. A moment later Sophia began driving screws back into the box with a small powered screwdriver. Shan looked around. The painting had been an odd size, the box must have been made just for it.

He looked at Ell, “Where are you going to put it?”

She smiled at him. “On the narrow little wall. Near the end of your old couch.”

Shan frowned, “But…”

Ell put a finger to her lips.

He said nothing more until he was out on the street carrying the box. “You can’t hang a fifty five thousand dollar painting in our house and continue pretending you’re poor!”

She grinned at him, “I’ll tell folks I got it for fifty five dollars. No one will even be the wiser.”

“What if they look up Mattioli? His signature is down at the bottom you know?”

She shrugged, “I’ll tell them it’s a forged copy.”

Shan snorted and rolled his eyes, “You’ve got it backwards you know? Most people pretend their cheap knock offs are the expensive originals.”

Ell pulled his arm to her and leaned up to give him a kiss, “Well, aren’t we unique?” They crossed a canal on one of the ubiquitous bridges and she said, “Feel like stopping in this café? I’d like a Coke.”

“Sure.”

They turned in and sat at a small outside table with an umbrella over it. Shan admired the way Ell sprawled back in her chair, completely relaxed, eyes drooping. He never felt as relaxed as she managed to look, even when she was busy. If he tried to just take it easy, he’d find himself worrying about the classes he had to teach Fall semester, or whether he’d ever find another phenomenon in math as interesting as his first recognition of the effect of distance on Ell’s theory. Married to Ell he knew he didn’t have to support himself, but he didn’t want to be a failure at his chosen profession. A waitress came and took their orders, Ell giving hers through a slitted eye as if she were dozing. “Raquel?” he said.

“Umhmm?”

“I know you’re not sleeping, so what’re you thinking about?”

“My handsome new husband,” she drawled, “and what I’m going to do to him when we get back to our room.”

Shan snorted, “OK, that sounds interesting. But what’s the other track of your multitasking mind processing?”

“Carbon…” she said dreamily.

A couple of guys squeezed in behind him, bumping his chair so he scooted forward. “Carbon.” He said with a smile. “What about carbon?”

“I’m trying to work up a theory that describes the pressure-temperature-charge-precursors and how they come together to form the different allotropes. You know, based on the information we got from Querlak? I think we should be able to predict and thus more readily control the conditions that cause local formation of graphene versus graphend versus diamond versus lonsdaleite. I need a good mathematician to help me with it,” she opened an eye and peered at him, “know any?”

Shan was trying to come up with a smart aleck response when both of her eyes flashed open and she came up out of her chair moving the way only Ell Donsaii could move.

“What?!” Shan said looking around.

Half a block away, Ell called back, “They got the painting.”

Belatedly Shan remembered the men bumping the back of his chair. Beyond Ell he saw a corner of the box as a man carried it around the corner. Shan was up and running too. Ell shot around the corner.

Luigi had been standing watch on the corner. He’d seen Gio get the box containing the expensive Mattioli painting that Julio had called him about. Emil and Marko squeezing between the young couple and the next table to distract them seemed to have worked perfectly. Gio had started down the street with the box held somewhat clumsily in front of him. A moment later Emil and Marko stepped out of the café behind Gio to further block any sighting of the package from the young couple’s location. Resisting the temptation to hurry they walked at an ordinary speed toward Luigi. In another few moments the package would be around the corner. Just as Luigi had started to relax the girl leapt up out of her chair and began running down the street toward them.

Dio, he thought, she’s fast! Faster than he could believe. Shit! Luigi coughed loudly and put his hand up to scratch his head.

Hearing the cough, Gio glanced to see Luigi scratching his head and knew they were blown. He turned the corner and started to run. Running with the boxed painting was difficult but Gio was carrying the package because he was very fast. The possibility that anyone might catch him before he reached the canal never crossed his mind.

Behind Gio, Marko knelt just around the corner to tie his shoe—and incidentally trip anyone running around the corner. Expecting it to be a bit before the owner got there, he hadn’t even steeled himself for the impact when the girl shot the corner and hurdled him easily. Startled he reached up to catch her foot—far too late.

Emil had turned a short way past the corner and leaned against the wall. His assigned role would be to clumsily step out and tangle into whoever pursued after they got up from tripping over Marko. He would be offering to help, while actually delaying the pursuit. To his astonishment, just as he had turned and leaned toward the wall, the girl leapt over Marko and shot by Emil’s position.

Long before Emil could react.

Still thinking that Gio would make it to the canal and the waiting boat, Emil watched in dismay as the girl caught up to Gio twenty meters before the canal. Emil didn’t see what happened but Gio apparently tripped. He sprawled to the pavement.

Emil and Marko pounded after Gio, Emil desperately wondering if they could still pull this off. She’s just a girl! He thought, we’ll threaten her. When she gives up the painting we’ll toss it out to Tobar’s boat, then disappear.

Marko arrived just in front of Emil. The girl stood fearlessly in front of the box that now lay in the street. Marko reached out for her growling, “If you know what’s…” Even though the girl didn’t have any device in her hand, Emil saw a spray appear from nowhere and mist Marko’s face. Marko’s hands shot up to his eyes and he crouched, screeching.

Emil raised his right hand in surrender, reaching out with his left for Marko’s back to steady him. From the corner of his eye he saw Gio, back on his feet and stepping their way. Emil was about to warn Gio off when the girl pointed a finger at Gio and he sprawled to the stone paving! What in all the hells? Emil pulled back on Marko, keeping his right hand up and wondering how they would run from the scene of this crime when Marko couldn’t see. Was he going to have to leave Marko to the police?

The brunette girl bent and picked up the box with the Mattioli in it, keeping her eyes on Emil and saying, “You boys really should get some honest work.”

The girl’s blond husband ran up, “Raquel, you OK?”

She nodded, “These boys were just leaving, right?” Her frighteningly cold green eyes remained focused on Emil. Still without looking to her husband she said, “Hopefully they’re about to go apply for jobs.”

As Emil continued to lead the sobbing Marko away from the girl, Emil saw Gio limping around a corner.

The girl’s husband said, “But aren’t you going to press charges?”

She shook her head.

As they walked away he thought he heard her quietly say, “I Tased one of them. Tasers aren’t legal here so I don’t want the police asking too many questions.”

“Oh,” the man said as Emil thought, I didn’t see a Taser!

Shan said, “Where are we going now?”

Ell grinned up at him, “Back to drink my Coke. I wouldn’t want them to think we ran out on our order. Didn’t you want your coffee?”

Shan laughed, “My coffee order kind of left my mind. You aren’t feeling freaked out?”

Ell put an arm around him and leaned her head on his shoulder. She quietly said, “This kind of stuff has happened to me so much as ‘Ell’ that it doesn’t distress me all that much anymore. But it’s certainly one of the reasons I think we should live our lives with me as Raquel.” Ell looked at him a moment “Are you feeling ‘freaked’? We could just take our drinks to go and head back to our apartment.”

“No, no it’s OK.” He glanced around, “You don’t think those guys will be looking for us?”

She snorted, “I think they’re suitably chastened.”

They sat back at the table they’d left. This time Shan leaned the box against their own table so they’d notice if anyone touched it. He saw their waitress staring wide eyed at them. She came over, saying in English, “You here again? What happened?”

“Someone snatched our package here,” Ell said.

This time the girl spoke Italian. Allan translated, “You got it back?!”

Ell nodded, “Do you have our order?”

“Oh!” she said, startled that they would still be thinking about their order. “Just a moment, please.” She turned went to busy herself behind the counter, occasionally throwing a disbelieving glance their way.

Shan leaned forward, “Where’s the Taser?” he asked quietly.

Ell said, “I installed it in my finger.”

Shan’s eyes shot wide. “No shit?! How can it be in your finger?”

“Actually, just the port the darts are shot through is in my finger. The port itself is pretty small.”

“You’re kidding!”

She shook her head and looked up to take her Coke from the waitress. “We could put one in your finger if you like. I have to warn you though,” she grinned ruefully, “installation hurts like a bitch.”

***

Eating their dinner at an outside table on Piazza San Marco, Shan and Ell studied the Basilica and watched the passersby. Shan said, “I’m thinking we should go somewhere else. See a different part of Italy or something. Maybe rent a car?”

Ell blinked at him wide eyed, “But, we’ve already paid for our apartment here for another week!”

Shan leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially to her, “It’s no problem… my wife she ees veddy reech. We’ll just spend some of her money.”

“Oooh! That sounds like fun.” Ell said, washing her hands together. She raised an eyebrow, “How about a different country?”

Shan pursed his lips, “For instance.”

“I don’t know… how about India?”

“India?” he narrowed his eyes, “What part?”

Ell’s eyes twinkled, “Delhi?”

“The Olympics?! Could you get tickets?”

“Mmmm… I can do better than tickets.”

“You’re going to participate?!”

Ell shrugged. “Well… I’ve been thinking about it.”

“But you haven’t been practicing! You can’t expect to be able to just go back to it without getting in shape!”

She tilted her head and narrowed an eye, “I do a lot of stuff after you go to bed sleepyhead.”

“You’ve been practicing?!”

“Well… no. I’ve just tried a couple of routines to make sure I can still do them.”

Eyes round, Shan breathed, “And you can. Without even working on them.”

Ell glanced to the side, “I… can do a lot of things… that other people can’t.” In a whisper she said, “I’m not sure why. Sometimes it makes me kind of uncomfortable.”

“Will they let you enter this late, without qualifying or anything?”

“Yeah, I’ve already asked.”

“What events?”

“The gymnastics team competition, the sprints and the long jump.”

“Wait!” Shan leaned forward, eyes ablaze. “You’re entering track and field events?!”

She shrugged, “Maybe? I talked to the coach about it when I was kinda pissed at Michael Fentis. But… I’m not sure I really ought to enter those races just because he irritated me…” Ell looked up at Shan, “What do you think?”

“Can you really run fast enough to compete?”

Ell shrugged again, “Yeah.”

Shan’s eyes sparkled, “Hell yes you should! Fentis is an ass! I can’t stand the jerk and I’d love for you to put him in his place. Make him wish he’d never said, ‘she can’t really run or she would have entered a meet.’”

“I don’t know. You don’t think it seems kind of childish to let him goad me into doing this?”

Shan closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair a beatific smile on his face. “Well yeah, but, be childish for me. I’m a man and men love to see jerks get what’s coming to them.”

Ell stood up and stretched. “I kinda do too, and Fentis has been getting under my skin for eight years now. Shall we go tonight? It’s gonna take days for you to get over another three hours of jet lag you know.”

“Tonight?! But we’ve got to make reservations and…” Shan trailed off at her smirk.

“You’ve got to get used to being married to a rich girl. I’ve got a Gulfstream waiting at the airport in case I’m needed somewhere urgently. It can fly us to India.”

“But… why did we fly commercial to Italy then?”

“Because I didn’t want Raquel leaving on her honeymoon in a private jet, it’d blow our cover. But over here, no one knows who we are. We just show up, get on the jet and take off. No one’ll be the wiser.” She frowned, “In India though, once the Olympics start and I’m using my Ell identity, you’ll have to sneak around, especially to go to any events. We don’t want anyone recognizing you and wondering what you’re doing out of Italy where you’re supposed to be honeymooning in Venice on my gram’s dime.”

“Oh… yeah. How are we going to do that?”

Ell’s eyes crinkled with mirth, “I’m gonna put makeup on you.”

“Really?” Shan asked, wide eyed.

“Yup. We’ll cut your hair, change its color, darken your skin and puff up your cheeks a little. Voila—no one’ll recognize you. I’ll have to disguise myself when I’m away from the Olympics and hanging out with you,” she shrugged, “but I’m used to disguises.”

Chapter Eight

Natya Kolmenya opened the door and peered out. No one was really looking her way so she waved to Donsaii and they both stepped out to join the crowd of Team USA athletes and coaches waiting to march into Delhi’s new Olympic stadium. She reflected that it was a good thing the stadium was covered. A typical August storm had started pouring rain about ten minutes ago. For a moment she wondered what would happen with truly outdoor events like the marathon if extended rains struck, then decided not to worry about something that wasn’t her problem.

For a while no one noticed Donsaii, in good part because she kept the hoodie up on her team sweats. But then Sylvie Jensen, Team USA’s best contender in the all-around turned and said, “Coach…”

Natya saw Sylvie’s eye’s bob over to Ell momentarily, then back to Natya, then back to Ell where they stuck. Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open and her hands shot to her face. She stopped walking and other athletes piled up around her. After another stunned moment, Sylvie let out a piercing shriek.

Natya had feared this moment. She worried about the possibility that the other athletes would be angry to have Donsaii there, immediately relegating them to secondary status.

But Sylvie appeared to be euphoric. After the shriek she started bouncing up and down in excitement, yelling, “Donsaii, Donsaii, Donsaii!”

By then all the athletes in their immediate vicinity had turned their way. At first curious, then startled, then excited. Soon Natya saw ripples of excitement spreading away with them as the epicenter.

Sylvie, so excited she could barely speak, held her hands out to Ell and jittered out, “Oh, Ms. Donsaii. You’re my hero! Watching you and dreaming of being you… that’s why I’ve worked so hard to be an Olympian! Are you going to compete?!?! Please, please, please say you are! No one will be able to touch us if you’re on our team!”

Giving up on her anonymity, Donsaii dropped her hoodie and winked at Sylvie. “I thought I might enter a few events, which ones do you think I should try?”

Round eyed with excitement, Sylvie exclaimed, “All of them! Oh my God, we are so gonna kick ass!”

With the hoodie down, Donsaii’s short strawberry blond locks tipped off people farther away as to what had generated the excitement. The ripples spread faster and wider…

***

Delhi, India—The Olympics in general, and the gymnastics world in particular erupted in an absolute frenzy when Ell Donsaii appeared with the Team USA athletes at the opening ceremony. As of right now no one seems to be sure whether she’s appearing as a coach or might actually be subbed in to participate. Her coaches have been tight lipped about exactly what’s going to happen…

Natya stepped into the room where the gymnastic team had agreed to meet. Stony silence met her. Her team stood angrily, arms folded over their chests in more or less two groups. Natya quickly recognized that the best members of her team were in the group on her right and the weaker members on the left. Donsaii sat cross-legged on the floor off to one side. “What’s going on?” Natya asked.

Vanessa, her assistant coach, said disgustedly, “Some of the girls are having a snit…”

Tanaya, their vault specialist and one of the weakest members of the team, exploded. “She’s too old! She can’t compete at this level anymore! You’re going to be giving her spot to someone who could compete!”

Sylvie responded vehemently, “You’ve seen the vid from Christmastime! She can still do those elements!”

“Floor exercise, maybe,” someone else said, “but not beam, bars or vault!”

Tanaya turned to Natya, “She’s admitted she hasn’t even been practicing!”

Natya felt her notoriously short temper begin to boil, “Just who do you think is coach on this team! I’m going to use the best gymnasts we have, no matter how much you bitch and complain! If any of you don’t want to be on this team…” She ran down when she realized that Donsaii had raised her hand. “Yes?”

Donsaii stood and quietly said, “It might ease everyone’s stress to know that I can only participate in the first two days of the gymnastics part of the Olympics. So the way things are scheduled. I’ll only be in the ‘team’ part of the competition. Not in the ‘all-around’ or the individual competitions. I’ve already got individual gold medals from the Dallas Olympics, but I’d love to help you guys win the team medal here…”

Natya and Vanessa were sorely disappointed. Sylvie and a few other members of the team proclaimed disappointment too, but Natya suspected that even they were secretly relieved to have some chance at gold themselves.

Vanessa didn’t know what to make of Donsaii’s practice session on the actual Olympic equipment in the stadium. She always wanted to be last or nearly last on the apparatus. This meant she stood watching, apparently fascinated, as the other members of the team did their routines. When she took her turns on the apparatus she performed flawless and highly difficult routines that would have won gold at any meet in the world. Despite the beauty of those routines, everyone was disappointed because they contained none of Donsaii’s own astonishing elements.

The ones that no one else could do at all, much less perfectly like she’d done them in the Dallas Olympics.

The ones named “Donsaii.”

After Donsaii finished a routine on the uneven bars, Vanessa stepped over to her. “What happened to your back triple dismount? Or your other ‘Donsaiis’?” she asked in a low voice, referring to the elements that Ell had been the first to do and that were therefore named after her.

Donsaii widened her eyes. “You think I should do those too?”

“Yes! Of course.”

“Well, probably I should practice them then. But I’d like to do that out of the public eye. Could you spot me for an off hours session in the practice room?”

“Okaay…”

Vanessa turned to head off Natya who she could see stalking their way, probably to ask Donsaii the same questions she had just asked. Then she went to check on availability of the practice room in the evenings.

Vanessa couldn’t believe she had a gymnast wanting to practice at 1 o’clock in the morning! She’d initially reserved a time at 7 PM but Donsaii had wanted to practice after midnight instead! Certainly, the room was empty in the middle of the night—the night before the qualification rounds. Vanessa had argued that staying up that late at night would throw her off before the meet but Donsaii had insisted. Entering the empty room with Donsaii, Vanessa headed down to spot Ell for a vault…

At 2:30AM Vanessa headed back to bed, head whirling with what she’d just witnessed. Somehow she didn’t feel tired anymore…

***

Delhi, India—August 2: Gymnastics fans were ecstatic yesterday when Ell Donsaii appeared with Team USA for the qualification round, dressed out to compete. The crowd gave her a standing ovation when she stepped up to the vault runway, however they were clearly disappointed when she performed a Tsukahara two and a half. The vault was beautifully performed but the audience obviously had wanted to see the “Donsaii,” which no one has even attempted to perform in competition since Donsaii first performed it herself at the Dallas Olympics eight years ago. Ms. Donsaii continued in this vein for the remainder of the qualifying round, performing difficult routines flawlessly and scoring significantly higher than any other gymnast at the competition. Her performance certainly ensured Team USA’s spot in the team finals but left the crowd hungering for her feats of yore…

A bus arrived and Viveka boarded for a ride out to the new Olympic venues. Many temporary jobs could be had there. She really liked her new home and, of course, not paying rent helped tremendously. Her mother had denounced Moman to her and all their relatives back home for taking advantage of them. Nonetheless, Moman hadn’t returned any of the money she’d collected over the years. Even with school, room and board covered, Viveka did need some additional money. She’d found a job that didn’t conflict with her class schedule selling Olympic paraphernalia at one of the stands. Today, it being a weekend she would work a full day.

What she would do for work after the Olympics were done she didn’t know.

She sighed. Men crowded the bus. She thought about trying to get off and wait for a “women’s bus,” but the bus had begun moving while she’d daydreamed. The driver likely wouldn’t return her money, the next bus would probably be much the same and waiting for the next women’s bus might make her late. The man at the front of the aisle ran his eyes over Viveka. She hesitated to move back into the crush, but the driver roughly said, “Move back, I can’t see.”

As she’d feared when she’d moved into the aisle and stood next to the man he moved so his thigh touched her hip. Viveka moved an inch away, but in a moment the man’s leg contacted her again.

Viveka had been walking almost everywhere, but the Olympic venues were too far. She considered forcefully telling the man to stop and hoping it didn’t make the problem worse. Today… she just didn’t have the fortitude. Staring blindly at the advertisement behind the driver’s head Viveka numbly rode on as the man rubbed against her. To her relief he didn’t bring his hands into play.

***

On the vid Radin Venta turned to Eva Escanescue as the Olympic gymnastics teams warmed up for the team finals, “Well, Eva, yesterday I had hoped for a repeat of our thrilling experience at the Dallas Olympics back when Donsaii first exploded onto the gymnastic scene. Frankly, I’ve been disappointed. What’s your take on what we witnessed at the qualifications yesterday?”

“Well many will be hoping that Donsaii is just holding back until the individual events. Their take will be that she is avoiding the risk of injury during the team events where, with her flawless though mundane performances, Team USA is almost guaranteed the gold. You must remember that the performances she submitted yesterday would, for any other gymnast, have us very excited. She undertook the most difficult routines that are being performed by other gymnasts nowadays and her execution was impeccable. She achieved the highest scores of any gymnast in each qualification event by comfortable margins. Others will say that, Donsaii, now twenty four years old, is too old to replicate the astonishing feats she performed in Dallas. They will say she should not have returned eight years later to tarnish the image she left when she was at the top of her game.”

Venta said, “Well, I for one was on tenterhooks when she appeared yesterday. Then, I found myself terribly disappointed that she didn’t perform a single Donsaii. I’m hoping against hope that we might still see some of those astonishing elements in the individual events. I’m telling myself that I should enjoy the amazing perfection she can still bring to some quite difficult routines. I’m telling myself that I should be grateful to have been there in Dallas when she was at the top of her game. But, in my heart of hearts I’m still sorely disappointed. Oh well, for now let’s settle in to watch the team finals.”

“Donsaii is approaching the runway for the vault” Venta said quietly. “Yesterday, the crowd gave her a standing ovation just for showing up, but today they’ve stayed seated. Probably because they were so disappointed when she only performed a Tsukahara two and a half. That’s a very respectable vault of high difficulty and she performed it so perfectly that she got the high vault score in the qualifications round by a comfortable margin. However, that Tsukahara couldn’t compare to the ‘Donsaii’ that she performed eight years ago in Dallas. No one really expects her to do anything other than that same excellent Tsukahara today, but hope springs eternal.

“There she goes down the runway. Oh my God, she’s going fast! She was a rocket in Dallas, could she… YES! Holy… mother! I have no idea what that vault was. It wasn’t the ‘Donsaii’ she did in Dallas. I think it has to have been an even more difficult vault. It went by too fast for me to even be sure what she did! And she stuck the landing! Perfectly in the middle of the lane, facing straight ahead! Feet together, completely balanced. That was amazing! And absolutely elegant. As she did in Dallas, she made an incredible athletic feat somehow appear graceful and stylish. And effortless! As if the entire vault was as easy as the final flourish when she threw her hands up and out, then took her bow!

“The stadium is in absolute and total pandemonium! The judges seem stunned, I suspect because whatever Donsaii did, it happened so fast that the judges aren’t really sure exactly what she did without looking at it in slo-mo. They’re supposed to judge in real time. On the other hand it was incredibly high, unbelievably far, perfectly stuck and certainly had more rotations and twists than anyone, even Donsaii, has ever done before. With the new grading scheme giving five total points for the most difficult routine ever performed and the other five points for perfection of execution, gymnasts have not even had the possibility of getting a 10 because none of them could perform the ‘Donsaii’ which had been the most difficult vault ever performed. However, this vault was obviously even more difficult. It puts her previous 10.0 to shame and would therefore have to be a 10.0 as well. Ah, the big screens have started to show it in slow motion up above the crowd. Every eye in the stadium is on those screens, even the judges. My God! Even in slo-mo it’s hard to tell what just happened! I think that was three and a half rotations in pike with two and a half twists. I think…?

“The judges have given her another 10.0…”

***

Her shift done, Viveka left the stand where she’d been selling Olympic gear. They’d completely sold out of anything to do with gymnastics. Donsaii’s performances in the nearby gymnastic venue had galvanized the crowds. Viveka had only caught glimpses of Donsaii doing her thing even though they had a large screen in the back of their stand constantly showing highlights from the day’s events. Once Donsaii had done that astonishing vault, it seemed that those highlights had focused 60% of their replays on Donsaii. As she performed on each additional apparatus, replays of her amazing performances took up a greater percentage until the video seemed to be 95% Donsaii. The chaotic excitement of the crowds turned into a buying frenzy that kept Viveka too busy to see more than an occasional shot when she turned to pick up items displayed behind her.

One glimpse of the video showed the impossibly beautiful Donsaii frozen in a moment, arms gracefully up and out, just after sticking a landing. That picture stuck in Viveka’s mind. Despite the frenzied pace necessary to keep up with demand at their stand, Viveka’s mind kept tracking back to the fact that this beautiful young woman had not just crushed her competition in gymnastics. She’d founded the company that currently supported many in Viveka’s village.

She’d saved the world from the comet.

Was there anything Donsaii couldn’t do?

Viveka resolved to get on the net later and learn as much as she could about this remarkable woman. Perhaps there was some way she could get a job at Donsaii’s company or somehow duplicate her success. The more she thought of it, the more Viveka fantasized of applying for a job at Donsaii’s company once she had her degree. Perhaps she could even move to America? The men weren’t supposed to be such pigs there.

As Viveka walked toward the avenue to the city, Shalu, her new friend from the sports stand called out to her. “Viveka! Wait, we can ride the bus together.”

Viveka gratefully turned. “Good. But I haven’t time to wait for the women’s bus.”

“I don’t either,” Shalu laughed and shook a fist, “we will defend each other.” They ran together across the street to board one of the buses just before it turned around to go back the other way. Having just disgorged passengers, it had many seats available. Viveka and Shalu were able to sit together.

***

Ell stepped out of a back door of the stadium that the gymnastics competitions were held in. She’d redone herself in one of the bathrooms in the warrens beneath the stadium’s risers. Wearing what she thought of as her “Ellen” face—dark skin, short dark moussed hair, beaky nose—she felt pretty anonymous. The skin and hair color were similar to many people in India though the nose would be a little unusual. She didn’t have on the padded pants that she’d worn as Ellen and in fact hadn’t darkened all of her skin, just what showed. In any case, no one took notice of her in that getup and she started down the street without anyone even glancing at her.

Delhi built the Olympic facilities over a flattened slum area in an effort to use the Games to revitalize that part of the city. This meant newly paved roads, as well as groups of new hotels not too far away. The police patrolled heavily in an attempt to quell incidents that might put off the tourist trade they hoped to build with the Olympics. However, anger amongst the people evicted from slum locations had still resulted in some incidents. Also, visiting women were still being cautioned about the crude behavior of Indian men toward unaccompanied women. Those men were supposed to act much more rudely toward fair skinned women so Ell thought she would be safe in her disguise.

Steve had demanded that Ell allow him to pick her up in their rented car when she needed transport about the city but Ell had refused, feeling that it would destroy her attempts to anonymously explore the city with Shan.

***

Viveka’s bus turned and at the next two stops it rapidly filled with people leaving the nearby arenas. Viveka’s eyes widened to see a young woman get on the bus wearing snug jeans and a t-shirt that displayed a slender but gorgeous figure. The woman had dark skin suggesting Indian heritage but an atypical hooked nose. And surely she was western, wearing those clothes and one of their AI headbands. A local woman would never wear clothing that displayed herself like that because of the expected crude reaction from Indian men.

Shalu nudged Viveka and pointed to the woman. “Poor woman must be a tourist to wear jeans like that.”

Viveka sighed and whispered back, “Can you imagine what it would be like to live wherever she came from? Free to wear what you want, without fear of being attacked? I hope she’s OK. Perhaps these men have been listening to the government’s entreaties to behave better?”

More people crowded the aisle, pushing the woman back beside Viveka. With a sick fascination Viveka watched the man directly behind the woman place his hand on her hip…

***

Ell hopped on one of the small buses that traveled the avenue out toward their hotel. Unsurprisingly for India, people crowded the bus so no seats stood empty. Unworried, Ell grabbed the overhead bar with her left hand and looked around with interest at all the exotically dressed people, carrying mysterious things. The intense crowding they routinely accepted seemed unbelievable to her.

To Ell’s surprise the full bus stopped again and even more people crowded onto the bus. They packed the aisle she’d thought was already full even tighter and pushed Ell back into the people behind her. A hand rested briefly on her waist, as if to steady her. But then it slid down over her buttock toward her crotch.

Allan translated the man’s Hindi as he whispered to the man beside him, “Oh, you should feel the ass on this whorHUnnh…” His breath exploded out of him as Ell drove her elbow into his stomach.

Ell turned to look at him as he sank to his knees goggle eyed, moaning to get his wind back. “Oops,” she said, looking down at him in wide eyed faux sympathy, “I think your hand slipped… but then my elbow twitched… Sorry.” To Allan she subvocalized, “Pepper, 2, quarter.” She glanced around at the other people on the bus. She realized that only two other women rode it. Those pretty young women, looking to be about nineteen or twenty, sat in the seat just to Ell’s left and stared up at her in astonishment.

At first the men around Ell seemed startled by what had happened to the man behind her. But then some ugly expressions appeared. A couple of them began shouting angrily in Hindi. Allan translated one clear voice to say, “Dressed like a slut and then upset when we take a feel…” A hand clamped to the inside of Ell’s right thigh. She glanced down, saw it belonged to the man in the seat beside her right hip. Passing her finger just in front of his nose she said, “Right, fire,” and Allan sent a quarter cc of capsaicin spray directly up into the man’s nostril. The hand left her thigh to clap against his face as he reared back in agony.

Arms slid around Ell from behind, groping her breasts while trying to immobilize her in a bear-hug. “Left, Taser, one, fire.” The dart shot into the man’s upper thigh. With a spasm he dropped away from her quivering, voiding his bladder and sagging into the men behind him. Ell’s knee rocketed up into the crotch of the man trying to crowd her from the front. That man sank back to his knees, an unbelieving but anguished look on his face.

A small space developed around Ell. She raised her hands, “Give it up guys,” she said in a calm tone. “You’re molesting the wrong woman tonight.” A moment later, once Allan had given her a translation, she said essentially the same thing in Hindi.

In her ear Steve said, “Christ Ell, sorry. Hang on, we’re almost there.”

Ell glanced out the window of the bus to see the car her security team had rented pulling up beside the bus. It looked like they were about to cut in front of the bus in order to halt it. Ell said, “Hold off for a minute Steve, I think things are in control here.”

Ell looked down at the young women by her side whose faces seemed to display a mixture of amazement and envy. Ell winked at them, but then resumed keeping a close eye on the men around her.

Viveka felt chills running down her spine as she stared at the woman in the aisle. When the man behind her had grabbed the woman’s breasts it had pulled up her shirt and her stomach had been  pale pink! For a moment Viveka’d wondered how the woman had lightened her stomach and why? But then she’d almost immediately realized the woman’s normal skin color was actually the pale color Viveka had seen on that muscular abdomen.

The woman beside her had disguised herself with skin of a color common in India. And those muscles she’d seen! Viveka’s eyes ran up and down the woman. The woman was extremely fit.

Viveka’s eyes darted around. Though no one else seemed to realize it, this woman must be one of the athletes, trying to leave the Olympic area unrecognized. But most of the competitors weren’t well known enough to be recognized by the man on the street… except for… Viveka leaned forward to look up at the woman’s face. She had a hooked nose but otherwise… Viveka choked, Ell Donsaii! She was sitting next to Ell Donsaii!

The bus stopped and the two men who Ell had pepper sprayed and Tasered were helped off the bus. A man got up and offered Ell his seat but she shook her head. There were no problems on the remainder of the ride. Some of the men continued to mutter and glare at her but appeared apprehensive about getting too close.

When she got off the bus near her hotel she didn’t notice the young woman from the seat next to where she’d been standing getting off just behind her.

Shan sat at a small outdoor café bemusedly glancing at his much browner forearm. He’d watched Ell’s performances in the gymnastic team events that afternoon with the same astonished awe as everyone else in the stadium. He couldn’t wait for her to arrive so he could give her some grief for keeping those skills a secret from her own husband!

The light had taken on a shimmery tone as the sun descended. The street still thrummed with people. Shan suspected that crowds always filled these streets, but that the additional people there for the Olympics filled every iota of space even more fully than usual. The man at the next table leaned toward Shan, “I say, could we borrow your extra chair?”

Shan shook his head. “Sorry, I’m saving it for my… wife,” he said stumbling over the new word, “she should be here shortly.”

“Oh, of course. I must say though—I note from your accent that you’re from America—I must say that it isn’t safe for a woman to go about alone here. The menfolk here can be quite rude to a woman who’s by herself on the streets. Oh, this must be the lady in question?”

Shan turned to see that Ell had slipped into the other chair at his little table. He gawped a moment, unused to her “Ellen” appearance. “Hey lady,” he smiled at her. “Did you have any trouble getting here? This gentleman,” Shan indicated the man at the next table, “said men can be rude to single women on the street.”

The man stood briefly and extended his hand, “Davis Thilwaite, I do hope they didn’t give you trouble?”

Ell shook his hand, “Raquel Bla… Kinrais. A couple of guys’ hands did stray into my territory,” she grinned, “but somehow some pepper spray got in their faces and they had to use said stray hands to wipe at their eyes. Last I saw them they were desperately trying to find some water.”

Davis drew his head back in surprise and a smile spread across his features, “Pepper spray?! Oh… brilliant!” He looked back and forth from Ell to Shan. “Are you here for the Olympics?”

“Yes, and our honeymoon.”

“Oh,” Davis frowned sympathetically at Ell. He waggled a finger at Shan. “Dragging you to a sporting event on your honeymoon. He should be ashamed Raquel.”

Shan put his hands up, waving them defensively, “We’re at the Olympics because of her, not because of me!”

“Ah, a lady who likes her sports,” he said, looking at Ell appraisingly while speaking to Shan. “You’re a lucky man you know?”

Taking her hand Shan looked at her and smiled, “Believe me, I know.”

“Well now. Perchance were you at the gymnastics arena today for that performance by Donsaii? She added another new element on every apparatus! Perfectly executed. Absolutely brilliant that! ”

“We were there,” Ell grinned at Thilwaite. She raised her eyebrows, “But did you see Anna Durchenka’s performance on the bars? It was perfect!”

Thilwaite’s eyebrows shot up. “There were other gymnasts there?”

They all laughed, though Ell’s brow furrowed with some concern. Before anything else could be said a waiter appeared to attend to Shan and Ell. Thilwaite turned back to his companions and Shan grinned at Ell, shaking a remonstrating finger at her. “Keeping secrets were we?”

Placing a hand on her chest, Ell said, “Me? Why, you treateth me unjustly sir!”

Shan shook his head sadly, “A husband should knoweth that of which his wife is capable.” He raised an eyebrow, “And ‘tis an awful shame when she hides such capacities.”

Ell snorked a laugh, “Where did this medieval speak come from? ‘tis ill done forsooth!” She giggled, “Or something like that.”

“You started it! ‘Treat me unjustly sir!’ you said.” Shan glanced up at the Indian woman who’d been standing just to the side of Ell’s chair, staring at her. He’d been avoiding noticing her as he’d learned to do with the beggars in India to keep them from assaulting him with their pleas. But this woman was dressed fairly well. She didn’t look like a beggar to him.

Ell turned to look up at her, then rose to her feet. “Hello.” She put out a hand, “Raquel Blandon.”

The young woman shook her hand. “Viveka Janu. How did you do that? I must learn so that I can teach those animals not to touch me!”

Ell blinked, then said, “So that was not unusual then?”

“No! They are always groping! Well, not always… but often. And they get away with it. No one does anything.”

Shan said, “Wait! Someone really did grope you?!”

At that moment the waiter returned with Shan and Ell’s drinks. Ell looked up at him, “Could we get another chair for this lady?”

The waiter looked at Viveka somewhat disdainfully and said, “There are no other chairs.” He waved vaguely around.

A thousand rupee bill appeared in Ell’s hand, “Are you sure?”

The man’s eyes widened. “I’ll find one,” he said, making the bill disappear and turning to look about with purpose.

Ell turned to Shan and grimaced a little, “Yeah, I was groped.” She glanced at Viveka, “Apparently not an uncommon experience here.”

The waiter appeared, carrying a chair which he put down so that Viveka could sit. “And what may I bring the Miss?”

“Oh!” Viveka covered her mouth as she glanced down at the menu. “I’m so sorry. I can’t afford…” She began to stand.

Ell put a hand on her arm, “It’s OK, I’m buying.”

Viveka looked at her in amazement, then glanced at the drink the waiter had just delivered to Ell, “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Another Coke,” Ell said to the waiter.

As the waiter moved off Viveka sat back down and turned admiring eyes on Ell, “I’ll bet those men think twice before they grope another woman!”

Shan turned a grin on Ell, “Oops, did you make someone regret touching you?”

“I told you I pepper sprayed a guy.”

Wide eyed Viveka asked, “Is that what happened to the man who was coughing and crying?”

Ell nodded. In an effort to get the conversation off the assault and her response to it, she asked, “What do you do Viveka?”

Viveka gulped, “I… I’m a student at IIT and I keep house for my room and board. Just now I’m working part time selling t-shirts at the Olympics.

“IIT?”

“Indian Institute of Technology.”

Ell took a sip of her Coke, “What do you study?”

“Chemical Engineering.”

Ell smiled at her, “Very cool!”

The waiter returned with Viveka’s Coke. “Are you ready to order?”

Ell smiled up at him, “Sure.” She looked at Viveka, “Let us buy you dinner. You can tell us about Delhi?”

Viveka gulped again. She’d been taught that it was polite to refuse such charity, but she couldn’t pass up this opportunity! “Yes Ma’am. Thank you Ma’am.”

After they’d ordered food, Ell didn’t ask about Delhi. Instead she looked searchingly at Viveka, trying to guess her age. “This is, what, your first year at ITT?”

“No Ma’am. This is my last year.”

“Really! You only look about eighteen or nineteen to me.”

Viveka ducked her head. “They moved me ahead some grades when I was young.”

Shan watched Ell studying the girl appraisingly and wondered what his new wife was thinking. He felt somehow that he should be angry about this girl horning in on his honeymoon, but actually he wanted to hear more himself.

“What are you going to do when you graduate?” Ell asked her.

Barely above a whisper Viveka said, “I hope to work for you Ms. Donsaii.”

Shan missed the implication of Viveka saying “Donsaii,” but Ell’s eyes widened. After a pause she grinned. “How did you know?”

“When that man grabbed you, your shirt came up and I saw your real skin.”

“Ah,” Ell mused. “And you put two and two together?”

Viveka nodded, taking a sip of her drink. She choked, pulling it away and staring at it.

“Is there something wrong with your Coke?”

Viveka said, “I don’t know. I’ve never had Coke before.”

Ell’s eyebrows rose, then she grinned, “Try another sip. I predict you’ll like it once you’re used to it.”

Viveka did. She took the glass away and stared at it with a smile. “It is good!”

Ell looked at her as if considering, “What do you know about deposition of diamond coatings on materials?”

Viveka shrugged, “The exact methods are almost always proprietary so not available to the public. However, in general most diamond synthesis is done by chemical vapor deposition at low pressures using methane as the carbon source. The process forms both the diamond and graphite allotropes. Free hydrogen radicals introduced into the process etch away the graphite that’s formed so that only the diamond allotrope is left.”

The waiter brought their dinner. Once they had begun eating Ell said, “What about graphene synthesis?”

Viveka frowned, “No one’s synthesized graphene in quantity yet,” she shrugged, “that I know of anyway.” She tilted her head and got a faraway look. “I think that to make it in quantity will require a weightless environment and a copper substrate… but of course I can’t be sure.”

Ell smiled at her, “I think my company will have a job for you when you finish your degree. What can you tell us about sights we should see after the Olympics are over?

Viveka arrived back home that Saturday evening her head whirling. Donsaii had tried to put money in Viveka’s account to secure a “right of first refusal of employment” for when Viveka graduated. Horrified when she found out Viveka didn’t have a bank account she’d instead deposited $10,000 US into Viveka’s temporary phone’s account and insisted Viveka open a bank account tomorrow. Realizing that Viveka didn’t have a network account either, she’d taken Viveka’s address and promised to send an AI headband like Donsaii wore with a connection to the net. Viveka had whispered that she didn’t have an AI to hook it up to, but Donsaii had said it would come already attached to an AI. Apparently this would be through one of the PGR connections based on Donsaii’s theories.

Viveka felt as if she had won the lottery…

Chapter Nine

Delhi, India—August 3: Donsaiiternation shot through the sports world again yesterday! At the Dallas Olympics eight years ago Ell Donsaii performed nine completely new gymnastic elements which were, as per tradition, each named after her. In the ensuing eight years, no one has attempted even a single one of those “Donsaiis” in competition. Fedor Yacrosky did attempt one of the floor elements in practice but he was injured on his landing. However, yesterday Donsaii again treated the world to the spectacle of eight of those “Donsaiis” being performed. She did this at the team finals in Olympic stadium. She executed them just as perfectly as she had in Dallas. The Donsaii she didn’t perform was her vault, and this was because she performed a new, even harder vault! In addition Donsaii performed one completely new element in each of the other three events. So, four more “Donsaiis” have been added to the list of gymnastic elements that other gymnasts may strive to perform… but probably never will…

On the vid, Venta said, “OK, we’re waiting for the competitors to enter the stadium for the all-around competition. Everyone is wondering whether Donsaii will have even more surprises for us in this part of the competition. No one doubts that she will win the gold in the all-around after the performances she turned in yesterday during the team competition. Team USA absolutely dominated the team competition based solely on Donsaii’s performances. It has been pointed out that, of course, if Donsaii had entered as a team all by herself, that team would have won the gold. The question now will be whether her teammate Sylvie Jensen might be able to win silver in the all-around.

“There’s Coach Natya Kolmenya followed by Sylvie Jensen and, my God, Amalie Robertson! Donsaii isn’t with them! Could something have happened to her? Was she injured yesterday?”

Eva Escanescue said, “Radin, if Donsaii was injured yesterday I didn’t see any evidence of it. Her last routine, the floor exercise, was perfectly executed just like all her other events. She didn’t limp when she and the other Team USA girls went up to collect their gold medals. She seemed to be fine and in good spirits at the post event interviews with the press.”

“Yes, she did Eva. I must point out that at those interviews she once again humbly deflected as much praise as she possibly could onto her teammates. Every question asked of her somehow finished with her speaking of how well one of her fellow athletes had done and how hard they had worked. She even had compliments for several gymnasts from other teams. Perhaps Donsaii’s ill today? I for one will be heartbroken if we don’t get to see any more performances from her these Olympics. Maybe she’ll be back tomorrow for the individual events…?”

***

“Cheryl and I would like to welcome those of you who are just now joining us live at Track and Field’s first morning session. Right now we’re watching the contestants line up for the first heat of the women’s 400 meters. Team USA’s most promising contender for this event is Seychelle Eventide who you will see in lane four. She is doing her customary pre-race dance. It’s a little shuffle that she does in exactly the same fashion before every race. Kind of a good luck charm I suspect.”

“Yes, Chuck, many of the elite runners have their little rituals, pieces of clothing or jewelry that they wear. This has been Seychelle’s ritual for some time now.”

“OK, all the runners are in their blocks, and down into position. There’s the gun, and they’re off! Eventide is off to a good start, making up distance on some of the outer lane competitors. Usana Morris of Trinidad is closing up in lane seven. Ana Schmidt of Germany is doing surprisingly well. Several of the weaker runners are falling behind as expected… Here they come around into the final straightaway… It’s going to be … Morris, Eventide and Schmidt who will advance to the semifinals.

During preparation for the second heat, the announcers discussed some of the more celebrated runners that would be competing in later heats.

The camera swept back to the starting line. “In the second heat for the 400, Team USA is represented by Rosa Richards in lane eight. Richards won the World Championship three years ago but her star has faded recently. She’s now considered the weakest contender for Team… Wait a minute, that isn’t Richards in lane eight! Richards has black hair and the girl wearing the USA colors in lane eight is a blond! There must have been a last minute substitution! But to my knowledge none of the Team USA sprinters are blond. Wait, Richards’ name just dropped off the stadium display board… it’s blank for now… Oh! Now it says ‘Donsaii!’ Could this be a relative of gymnast Ell Donsaii?

“No, the stadium board says ‘Donsaii, Ell.’ How can that be? Ell Donsaii’s currently competing over in the gymnastic stadium! Wait! I’m just now hearing that she didn’t show up for the gymnastics all-around competition. The camera’s zooming in. Yes, that is Ell Donsaii in lane eight!”

On screen some of the other runners appear to be upset. One was arguing with the official. He shrugged and motioned her back to her lane. She threw up her hands and stepped into her blocks.

The announcer recovered from a speechless pause. “What is a gymnast doing on the track?! How did she get a spot without competing? This is crazy! I know there have been these rumors that she ran faster than Michael Fentis in her run-up to the vault back in the Dallas Olympics, but surely no one took those seriously!”

Cheryl interrupted, “Chuck, as we all know Michael Fentis has had a burr under his saddle about Donsaii for a long time. In an interview a few months ago he spewed some vitriol over the claim some have made that she runs faster than he does. He’s been saying that such claims were ridiculous and that if she could actually run at those speeds she should enter a meet. Perhaps she’s taking him up on the challenge?”

“Well Cheryl, if that’s the case, I’m disappointed that the Olympic committee is allowing this kind of grandstanding. We all understand that she’s an amazing athlete. Fentis’ contentions aside, Gymnastics is a sport and she is the world’s very best. But she’s completely untested at any level in Track and Field competition. No matter how famous she is, she shouldn’t be allowed to assume the slot of an actual contender without proving her bona fides first!”

Cheryl said, “Well, I’m inclined to agree with you, but it looks like she’s going to run in this heat, whether we think she should or not. They’re in the blocks now.”

“Yes, and the woman to beat would be Jamaica’s Deva Fenton in lane four. They’re up… There’s the gun and they’re off! Oh, Donsaii got off to a terrible start! Fenton is blowing up the track, rapidly gaining ground on several of the other runners who started ahead of her due to the stagger. Sarter in lane seven has nearly caught up to Donsaii as they round the turn to the first straightaway. Oh, this is going to be a joke! Fenton is doing very well, only a little behind world record pace. Sarter is doing much better than expected. Chang in lane one looks to be out of the race with a pulled hamstring, limping badly. Donsaii’s keeping up with Sarter for now, down the straightaway on the backstretch but soon Sarter will be gaining ground because of her inside track. Here they go into the turn, Fenton in lane four is gaining, astonishingly Donsaii is keeping up with Sarter even going around the outside of the track. However, she won’t be able to keep that up. Lane two’s Tedesca looks to be gaining back a little of what she’d lost to Fenton. They’re coming into the last straightaway and Fenton’s in front, Tedesca’s in second, Sarter third and a surprising Donsaii is fourth. Wait! Just when I expected Donsaii to fade she’s passing Sarter! Can she keep it up? Yes! She’s crossed the line third so Donsaii, Fenton and Tedesca will be guaranteed spots in the semis.  I couldn’t be more surprised if Donsaii’d grown spots!”

“So, do you think we’ve just seen an amazing performance on the track by a gymnast?” Cheryl asked, “Something that we should be astonished to have seen—to have her show us that she can compete at an elite level in a completely different sport than her primary? Or did Donsaii hold back in the heats, like top of class runners who don’t want to use themselves up? Elite runners who just run fast enough to be guaranteed a spot in the next race?”

“I don’t know Cheryl. She made major missteps at every turn here. From her poor start off the blocks, to letting other runners make up the stagger on her in the first turn. She’s obviously a terribly inexperienced runner. Though we already know she’s physically capable of surprising feats of athleticism, they were in a very different sport. While I admit to being astonished that she did this well, I think it’s doubtful in the extreme that she’ll make it through the semis…

***

“Chuck! We’ve just gotten word that there’s been another Team USA substitution in this third heat for the 100 meters! This time Donsaii’s replacing Sanchez, their second contender. Sanchez was Team USA’s only backup to Keisha Abbot, the expected gold medalist. Though Sanchez was thought to be marginal to medal, it’s hard to believe they’ve again replaced someone who might have medaled with Donsaii, a completely unknown quantity!”

***

Delhi, India—August 4: Donsaii stunned the world again yesterday when she failed to appear for the gymnastics all-around competition where she was considered a lock for the gold medal. Instead she appeared in the Track and Field stadium where she ran in the 100 and 400 meter heats, qualifying in both for the semifinals to be held today. Arguments have erupted regarding whether she should have been allowed to compete in track and field without an existing record in other meets. Team USA Coach Shirley Black has pointed out that she was given complete discretion on substitutions for her team. Whether or not Black had the right to put Donsaii in, the question remains as to whether she has any chance at a medal…

“Cheryl, Donsaii will have to run in the 100 meter semifinals and finals as well as the 400 meters semifinals today if she is to continue to compete in both of these events. Will she be able to do it?”

“Well the 100 semi is the first event of the day and the 400 semi is two hours later. That should be time enough to recover from a short race like the 100. The real challenge will come if she qualifies for the 100 final. Trying to run the 100 final just two and a half hours after the 400 semi is very tough and is a big reason few sprinters run both distances. A 400 can really take it out of you and Donsaii has already famously proclaimed her lack of endurance at the Dallas Olympics. We’ll just have to see.”

***

“Chuck, the finals of the women’s100 meters is about to start. For those Team USA fans just now joining us, Keisha Abbot our gold medal hopeful, did indeed win her semi. However, Ell Donsaii was substituted at the last minute for Renae Sanchez. Apparently this substitution was at Coach Shirley Black’s discretion. Donsaii came in third in her heat. Good enough to qualify for the finals but not too promising. There is little doubt that Sanchez would have done better than that and might have had a chance for a medal. Coach Black has not been looking happy. She’s been getting a lot of criticism on the net and was seen having a heated conversation with Donsaii at one point. Black’s got to be hoping that Donsaii’s been holding back due to her claimed lack of endurance. Donsaii had to run in the 400 semis between the 100 semis and this 100 final and we can hope that during the 400, she was saving her energy for the 100. She came in third in the 400 semi’s as well, once again barely qualifying. I’ve got say I’m worried Chuck. What do you think her chances of medaling are?”

“Cheryl, she’s been slow out of the blocks and playing catch up in every race. I admire Ms. Donsaii as much as anyone else. I’m grateful to her for what she did when the comet came and must say that she’s an amazing gymnast. But it looks to me like Michael Fentis had it right. He said she couldn’t actually be as fast as some claimed she was when they speed-gunned her run to the vault at the Dallas Olympics. That speed gun and the later video analysis is indeed now suspect.”

“Well, Chuck, we’ll find out shortly. The women are getting into the blocks now. I’m crossing my fingers for Keisha Abbot to get her gold and hoping that Donsaii will at least get close enough to the medals to avoid embarrassment over having taken the place that Sanchez earned.”

“Everyone’s in their blocks,” Chuck Echols said. “They’re up! There’s the gun. Holy mother of God! Donsaii just exploded out of the blocks! I’ve never… never seen a start like that! Her take off completely blew away the best women runners in the world. And… she’s leaving the field behind! Farther and farther! Unbelievable! The other runners look completely outclassed! She’s won! She finished nearly twenty meters ahead of Abbot who was in second place!

“Chuck, for some reason we don’t have any times up on the big board. Something flashed momentarily but then it went blank again. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Donsaii had just set a new record!

“Sweet Jesus, Cheryl! The time… the time clock says 8.61! That can’t be right! Michael Fentis’ world record was 9.49 seconds!

“Wait, the board has just put up a 10.45 for Abbot. 10.45 would have set the women’s world record… if Donsaii hadn’t just beat Abbot by almost twenty meters! At that speed twenty meters would be about two seconds.”

“Chuck, consternation is sweeping the stands. Some seem to be saying the clock must be wrong. Others are shouting with glee to have been here to witness this amazing event. The officials have gathered to review the secondary clocks and to use the video to back check the accuracy of the times.”

Cheryl said, “There doesn’t seem to be any doubt in Keisha Abbot’s mind! She’s just picked Donsaii up by the waist and is screaming something. Now she’s put her down and is dancing around, still shouting. She’s saying… she’s shrieking ‘Donsaii!’ over and over again. Shaking her fist and pounding Donsaii on the back. Donsaii appears to be blushing. Rather than shaking a fist or proclaiming her victory as other runners would, she’s simply standing in the middle of the track collecting hugs from the other runners. Abbot has grabbed the Stars and Stripes and is making a circuit of the track, still shouting Donsaii’s name.”

Cheryl said, “Well Chuck, it looks like Michael Fentis was wrong. Very wrong. I wonder if he’s regretting the day he challenged Donsaii to enter a race…”

***

Delhi, India—August 5: As it did in Dallas eight years ago, the sport world’s focus has turned to Ell Donsaii. So far this Olympics she’s added a gymnastics team gold. Though no one doubts that she could have won more individual gold in gymnastics, yesterday she entered the Track and Field arena, winning the gold in the 100 meters. She broke the world record in the 100 while doing so. Not just the women’s world record held by Keelaw Fell, but the men’s world record held by Michael Fentis—by nearly a full second, in an event where new records are usually advanced by mere hundredths! Today she’ll be running in the 400…

“Well Cheryl, what a difference a day makes, eh? Yesterday everyone was offended that Coach Shirley Black had displaced seasoned Team USA competitors who had earned their stripes. She replaced them with Ell Donsaii, an amazing gymnast, no doubt, but someone who had never competed in a track meet at all, much less at this level. In interviews last night, Black said that Donsaii had proven that she could break the women’s world records during a visit to the Olympic training facility in Chula Vista. However, Black has admitted that even she had no idea that Donsaii would be able to destroy the men’s world record as well.”

“Yes Chuck, and now we’re about to find out what she can do in the 400 meters. Yesterday she ran the 100 final after running two other races, presumably a problem for an athlete with a self-confessed lack of endurance. She’s granted no interviews so we don’t know what her thoughts are regarding her accomplishments so far. In fact no one’s even seen her away from the track. She’s not staying in the dorms with the other athletes but somewhere away from the Olympic campus. No one seems to know where and, amazingly enough, the paparazzi haven’t tracked her down.”

“Cheryl, the women are stepping into their blocks… They’re up... And they’re off! Once again Donsaii has exploded out of the blocks in lane one, putting paid to her laughably poor starts in the prelims. My God! Since she’s running the inner lane, you’d be expecting her to catch up to the stagger somewhat on this first curve. She hasn’t just caught up she’s passed everyone! In the back straightaway she’s gaining more and more on them… Now she’s coming into the second curve where the inner lane runners traditionally are still catching up on to their shorter course, instead she’s rocketing farther ahead! Holy crap! She’s about 70 meters ahead of the field and still pulling away! There’s the finish line.

Ell Donsaii has another gold medal and must own another world record!”

“Chuck, Donsaii’s coasted to a stop and turned back toward the finish line where bronze medalist Seychelle Eventide is giving her a congratulatory hug. As happened yesterday, the stadium’s official scoreboard has not instantly put up her score like they normally do. Presumably this is because the officials are having a hard time believing the clock and are checking it twice like they did for her 100 meter run.”

Chuck shouted, “Yes! 39.13! Another world record! Seven seconds better than the women’s world record and nearly four seconds better than the men’s record held by Michael Fentis. This is beyond astonishing!”

“Chuck,” Cheryl said, “they’ve started showing the race in slo-mo up on the big screens. I have to say that—in slo-mo—Donsaii looks light on her feet. Where the other runners appear to be straining to run at their maximum speed, Donsaii looks flowing, graceful and relaxed. Like someone else out for an easy lope around the park! Watching this makes you feel like she could run even faster if she had to! I… I… wonder if she actually could…?

***

Delhi, India—August 8: As the world watches the Olympics today, almost every eye is turning once again to Ell Donsaii. Over the past two days she’s run the heats and semis for the 200 meters. As in the 100 and 400, she’s come in third in each of those events, just good enough to qualify for the next level. This time, no one doubts she’s saving herself for the final. Yesterday she also qualified for the long jump… and qualified with a women’s world record jump of 8.11 meters (26.6ft)! One can only wonder what she’ll jump today in the finals…

“Well Cheryl, what kind of surprises do you think Ms. Donsaii has in store for us today? The Olympic committee reports that she’s been tested exhaustively for every banned substance known to man as well as examined extensively by their physicians. They state that she is a completely normal and unenhanced woman in every way, albeit in extraordinarily good condition. Her amazing physical condition is something we can all see in those skimpy track suits. Not bulging with muscle, but very well defined. ‘Ripped’ in common parlance. Everyone now expects her to set a new men’s as well as women’s record in the 200, the question is, ‘what will she do in the long jump?’ Was her women’s world record yesterday the best she can do?”

“Chuck, some people have been pointing out the enormous distances she’s covered in some of her gymnastic routines when she wasn’t even trying to jump as far as she could. On the other hand, those leaps were made on ‘sprung’ gymnastic equipment so they may not be comparable. We’ll just have to wait and see. Whatever happens, there is no doubt now in most people’s minds that she’s set her sights on all four of Michael Fentis world records. I would say that calling this particular lady out—was not his best move.”

“Hah! You can bet I’d never want to piss that woman off! I’m much too grateful for what she’s done for our world. As almost everyone knows, sprinter Michael Fentis has led a personal crusade to question her athleticism, to debunk the rumors that she runs faster than he does and to generally and vulgarly belittle her accomplishments. Throughout, despite his tirades and offensive language, she has, publicly at least, complimented his achievements and repeated her hope that one day he’d consent to give her the autograph she first asked for eight years ago at the Dallas Olympics. However, I would say that, by setting out to demolish his world records she has officially put him on notice that she is ‘not pleased.’”

“Here’s Urai Fenbassa, the expected gold medalist for the women’s long jump. Well, she was the expected gold medalist until Donsaii’s jump yesterday. Fenbassa had jumped close to the previous world record in two of her past meets and is rumored to have broken it in practice. Here she goes. Oh! That looks like an excellent jump! The judges are measuring… 7.84 meters! That would have been a world record before Donsaii’s 8.11 meter jump yesterday. She’s likely guaranteed Senegal a silver.”

“Yes Chuck. That would have been an amazing jump two days ago. Now Donsaii’s stepping up to the runway. They’ve finished smoothing the sand. Here she goes. Oh Lordy! She’s just rocketing down the runway with that unbelievable speed only Donsaii can achieve. She’s launched herself into the air like no one else can… My God! She’s landed far beyond where Fenbassa landed.”

“They’re putting up the measurement… Sweet merciful… Donsaii’s jumped 10.13 meters. More than a meter beyond Michael Fentis world record of 9.04. She’s jumped more than 33 feet! And… it doesn’t look like she’s going to take her other two jumps… I guess that one was good enough, eh Cheryl?”

***

Delhi, India—August 11: Ms. Ell Donsaii is now up to a total medal count of ten Olympic golds. That would be four gymnastic golds from Dallas and one here in Delhi. Now she’s added golds in the 100, 200, and 400 meter sprints plus the long jump. Then yesterday she anchored Team USA in the 4X100 meters relay, taking a careful handoff before running more than fast enough to catch up to and pass the Jamaicans who had been leading. The Jamaicans had been the expected gold medalists but she brought her team’s baton in far in front of them. She’s fully expected to get another gold medal today in the 4X400…

Shan’s AI said, “Emma Kenner is calling.”

“Put her on,” he said, thinking that it must be around midnight back in North Carolina. “Hey Emma, what’s up?”

“Shan! I can’t reach Ell, is she OK?”

“Yeah, she’s got her headband off for the 4X400 relay.”

“Oh! I forgot about the time difference. Allan contacted me because he couldn’t reach her. Keldap’s attacking Sigwald.”

“Crap.” Shan glanced out at the field. Though they were setting up for the relay Ell wouldn’t be available for a while yet. “Allan, give me the feed from Sigwald.”

His HUD flickered and then Shan was looking at Keldap. Though, of course Shan didn’t really understand Keldap’s expression or body language, he had the feeling Keldap intended to look threatening. Keldap had some kind of a tool in one of his upper manipulators. Another manipulator had what looked like a part of Sigwald in it.

Emma said, “He’s cut off a part of Sigwald’s foot and has been threatening to cut off more.”

Allan said, “The piece Keldap is holding up is part of the skirt on Sigwald’s foot. Without it, Sigwald will no longer be able to hover or travel on ground effect.”

“What’s Keldap been saying?”

“He’s been demanding to know how to get to the stars.”

Shan sighed, “The one thing we can’t tell him. Let’s offer again to teach them something else.”

“What should I offer to teach them?”

“Ask Keldap what else they might want to know. We may learn something important from what he requests… Emma? Would anything terrible happen if we just abandoned Sigwald? Shut off the lights and power so to speak, and just left them the empty husk of the waldo?”

“I’ve been wondering about that. What if they could somehow open one of the ports in Sigwald from their end? Of course, all of Sigwald’s ports open into a pipe in near solar orbit that’s really hot to sterilize stuff transiting in either direction, so coming through that port wouldn’t help them much. But what if they fired a laser or something through that port that somehow broke open the near solar tube? If they could send through even one rolled up port of their own, then they’d be able to send through bigger and bigger ports until they had something they could send sigmas through… Or spaceships?”

“Oh… Shit! That sounds bad. What can we do to keep that from happening?”

“I don’t know… but I think we should try to negotiate. Meanwhile we should try to think of a way to destroy Sigwald, not just leave him inert there.”

Shan said, “Allan, say, ‘I am sorry that I do not know how you could get to the stars. I was sent here and do not know how that was done. Is there anything else I could teach you? Something important enough that you would let me go?’ Emma, I think Ell told me that the orbit of that intermediate near solar station is intentionally set to deteriorate into the sun?”

“Yeah,” Emma said, “but it shouldn’t burn up for another year or so.”

“Is there a way to decelerate it so it will deorbit faster?

“Let’s ask Allan.”

Allan came on, “Keldap says the only thing they want to know is how to get to the stars. He doesn’t believe that Sigwald could have come here to another star without knowing how he got here, at least in principle. He has begun to cut the front off of Sigwald’s other foot.” Typical for an AI, Allan continued without a pause, “There is a small rocket motor on the ‘intermediate near solar station’ which I could use to begin decelerating it. It would still take weeks for the orbit to deteriorate sufficiently to reach destructive temperatures.”

“Start deceleration.” Shan said. After a long pause he mused, “I wonder if we could ‘Brer Rabbit’ Keldap by begging him not to do something that we know would destroy Sigwald, or at least ruin Sigwald’s ports? If we asked him not to do it, and then he did it to spite Sigwald, perhaps we could get what we want.”

“Sounds good, but I don’t know what to ask him not to do. I mean, we could ask him not to melt Sigwald down to slag but I doubt he’d be fooled by that. We’d need to ask him not to do something that sounded painful but not destructive… I don’t know what that’d be?”

Neither of them said anything, each thinking furiously. Then Emma said, “Wait, Allan, how high powered is Sigwald’s laser? Could we use it to destroy that tool Keldap is using on Sigwald? Or even to shoot Keldap? Or, wait, even better! Could it cut the graphene straps that are holding Sigwald?”

“The actual laser is out at Ell’s farm and is quite large. The beam is all that is sent through to Sigwald. There is no doubt that the laser could destroy Keldap’s tool if the tool was stationary. But it would have to be trained on the tool for a few minutes to achieve enough heat to burn through. So if Keldap moves the tool, the laser wouldn’t burn deeply enough to do much damage. Having not trained a laser on a sigma’s flesh it is hard to know how fast it would injure Keldap. Graphene has an extremely high thermal conductivity and depending on the particular molecular structure of the straps it may be very difficult to burn through them.”

Shan snorted to himself, feeling like Allan had provided a list of not very useful information. Keldap still held the tool in his manipulator but he seemed jittery. Keldap danced from one location to another and the tool moved around so much there would be no way to train the laser on it for long. Suddenly Keldap left the area, heading back into the main part of the repair shed. Shan said, “Allan, quick! Try burning through a graphene strap.”

Sigwald’s field of view moved as he looked down at his own body and the straps immobilizing it. A red glow appeared on one of the straps but nothing happened. After a moment Allan said, “It would appear that these straps are indeed graphene that has a very high thermal conductivity. Infrared imaging shows that the entire strap is getting hot but the temperature at the spot the laser is striking is not even close to high enough to oxidize the carbon.”

“Crap!” Shan glanced down from his HUD as the crowd noise around him began to rise. The 4X400 race was on. For a moment he wondered if he should keep working on the Keldap issue and miss the race. He glanced up at his HUD and saw that Keldap hadn’t returned from wherever he’d gone. Guiltily he said, “Emma, if you get any ideas, let me know. The relay’s started and I’m going to watch.”

“OK,” Emma sighed, “I’m not having any strokes of genius right now.”

Team USA’s first leg had left them in 3rd place. The second leg had now merged from the separate staggered lanes the race had started in. Shan watched with dismay as two more runners passed the US on the backstretch leaving Seychelle Eventide to take the baton in 5th place. He’d known that the team was weak in the 400 but had thought it would be better than this. Seychelle passed one runner and tried for another but got blocked out and then was stuck running just outside the South African runner around the back turn. She faded without pulling back up to 3rd place and passed the baton to Ell in 4th. The baton pass lost them another spot back to 5th because they were excessively careful, having not had much practice with it.

Then Ell began to fly.

Goosebumps ran down Shan’s spine as his new wife stayed out in the second lane on the first turn. Despite her outside lane position she began passing the other runners. She started the back stretch in first place… pulling away.

On his feet Shan screamed incoherently. Without seeming to strain Ell widened the distance on the other runners to twenty, thirty, then forty meters as she made the back turn. She finished the race 50 meters ahead of the second place team from the Bahamas.

The crowd thundered and the announcers seemed speechless. After a moment the board popped up a time of 2:49.58 with a little “WR” symbol beside it to designate it as a world record. Shan knew that the men’s world record was 2:51… He shook his head. He really hadn’t had any idea what Ell was capable of when he’d asked her to ‘put Fentis in his place.’”

Shan watched the other three Team USA runners swarm Ell. They were bouncing up and down and Ell leapt up and down with them. He felt happy seeing her enjoy the victory. He’d had the feeling after her other wins that she looked just a little embarrassed by her easy wins. Admittedly, the way she blew the other runners away did make the Olympics seem like a high school track meet which just happened to have one world class runner competing in it. Ell joined the others in holding up the flag and graciously accepted the congratulations of runners from other teams.

Out on the field things wound down very slowly because the women’s 4X400 was the last track and field event so there was no need to clear the arena. Athletes from other events including men started wandering out to shake her hand. They didn’t seem to be jealous or angry—more awestruck in Shan’s impression.

Eventually Shan glanced up at his HUD remembering that momentous events might be occurring on Sigma Draconis. Keldap’s eye hovered close in Sigwald’s field of vision. Keldap had a glassy bubble over the eye to protect it and seemed to be doing something on Sigwald’s chest though Shan couldn’t see what. “Allan, what’s he doing?”

“He appears to be trying to remove the large port from Sigwald’s chest.”

Shan’s heart sank, “Oh crap! Where does that port go?”

“To the spectroscopic station in the solar orbital station. That’s where we analyzed the fragment of the rimwall to determine it was made of carbon.”

Shan wondered if it would actually be possible to open the port from that end. He knew that it couldn’t be done here on earth with Ell’s ports. They could only be turned on and off from the primary end. But these guys were aliens! They didn’t seem to be as advanced as he’d expected when he’d first heard that they had a ringworld with the incredible engineering effort that entailed. Obviously they were light years ahead of the human race in regards to structural carbon manufacturing and engineering. Yet they seemed to be far behind in computing? Though, he shivered over Ell’s thought that they might not need computers if they could simply merge enormous numbers of their organic brains to allow them to function as some kind of organic supercomputers.

What if Keldap had merged to become some kind of organic super genius and derived a method to open Sigwald’s port from his end? “Allan, let me know the moment that Ell puts on her headband.” Shan got up. “Ask Keldap what he’s doing.” Shan started down the stairs toward the lowest level, wondering if there might be some way he could get Ell’s attention?

Shan heard the tones of the sigma’s language go back and forth a moment or two, then Allan said, “He says he will power up the port and send something through it from there to wherever Sigwald came from.”

Shan closed his eyes at this confirmation of a nightmare come true.

Emma said, “What did Keldap say he was sending through the port?”

“I don’t know the word he used as of yet.”

“Oh God!” Shan whispered.

“No shit!” Emma breathed.

As Keldap lifted the port free Ell’s voice came on, “Hey guys, what’s so urgent?”

“Keldap’s cut that port loose from Sigwald’s chest. He thinks he can open it and send something through the port from his end back to our solar system.”

Ell said, “Allan, shoot the port in Keldap’s manipulator with Sigwald’s laser on high power—now.”

Shan’s eyes widened in startlement when the fragment of Sigwald that Keldap was walking away with suddenly coruscated into a brilliant white light, sparks flying everywhere. As Keldap lifted away from it with a few violent wing beats, the chest port fell to the ground looking like a roman candle, spraying brilliant flashes, sparkles and arcs. “Holy shit!” Shan breathed, “What just happened?”

He could almost hear the shrug in Ell’s voice as she said, “I had Sigwald made out of magnesium. It’s light and strong but exceedingly flammable. I’ve been worrying that he might accidentally catch on fire in that atmosphere with a high partial pressure of oxygen, but I wanted to be sure we could destroy him if we needed to.” She sighed, “I guess we need to. I can’t think of any way to salvage this situation. Can you guys?”

Epilogue

From the inside of their TS Querlak sensed with dismay the frenzied anger ripping through the Delnitch clade. They regarded the injury of their member Keldap as disrespectful and Delnitch never tolerated disrespect. There were a few members of the TS who, like Querlak, were pushing for calm, but an overwhelming consensus of rage and vengeance dominated.

The TS tamped down Keldap’s pain and turned him to stalk back over to Sigwald. “What did you do?! My manipulator is burnt!” Keldap waved the injured manipulator that had been carrying the port.

After a typical pause Sigwald said. “I sorry. But you make problems my body first. You make hole in my thorax.”

In as threatening a tone as possible the TS had Keldap say, “I will do much worse than make a hole…”

Suddenly knowledge flooded the TS from one of the chemists in its makeup. Sigwald is made of element twelve. What just happened was the magnesium in that piece of its chest wall oxidizing-burning! Before angering Sigwald further, he should be put in a vacuum.

Sigwald raised his head and looked down at his feet. Suddenly one foot, and a moment later the other, burst into the same brilliant white inferno that the chest wall fragment had. Then a spot on Sigwald’s chest also ignited. Before the chemist’s knowledge could flood the TS and warn against it, the majority dominated TS used Keldap’s knowledge of the shop to pick up a bucket of drinking water. Keldap heaved the water onto Sigwald. The conflagration exploded as the water hit it—the burning magnesium extracting the oxygen from the H2O to continue burning. This freed the water’s hydrogen to flare out, burning fiercely with oxygen in the air.

Despair rose like a gorge in Querlak’s throat as she used the TS to look out through Keldap’s eye at the smoldering remains of Sigwald. Very little other than piles of white ash—presumably magnesium oxide—remained. A few twisted lumps of other materials, aluminum, iron, copper lay amongst the ashes. The fire had been so hot that it even ignited the graphene straps and the graphend of the wall behind Sigwald. The pile really left nothing to study, much less communicate with or try to learn from.

“There,” she thought, “lie the ashes of my people’s future, destroyed by a rush to extract results from another people, rather than work in cooperation with them.”

Despair poured through her.

Her clade should never have bound itself to Delnitch…

***

As the Sigma Draconis rocket coasted past the sigmas’ home world, Ell gazed out of its camera at an astonishing world. The dark side completely covered with lights, the day side inundated with constructed habitat. An uninspiringly monotonous world, packed with a horrifyingly overpopulated race. A race of beings who grew their food on a drearily uninteresting ringworld. An engineering triumph without art. No more than a banal farm, harvesting joyless survival.

Pondering the sigmas Ell felt great sadness for their lost potential, yet tremendous relief that they would not soon be loose on the galaxy.

The End

Hope you liked the book!

If so, please give it a positive review on Amazon.

Try the next in the series, to be published someday soon.

Author’s Afterword

This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I have always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically possible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Essentially you ask, “what if” something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world? Each of the Ell Donsaii stories asks at least one such question.

“Allotropes” continues asking what kinds of cool things we could do with even small wormholes or “ports.” I’ll guarantee that a personal cooling shirt would be a big seller in August here in North Carolina. Ported weapons installed internally to your body could be constantly available and devastating in effect. Sending power through a ported drive shaft could actually make mankind’s dream of a personal flying machine viable (though it would still be dangerous, you’d need “Ell speed” reflexes to control it safely.)

What if an alien race had an even greater drive to reproduce than our own? Wouldn’t they wipe out all other species in their continuous hunger for more food and habitat? Some of you may feel the human race is well on its way down this path, but at least we’re making some efforts to control our own reproduction and protect other species.

Finally what if we could learn to form the allotropes of carbon where and when we want?

-Carbon forms more compounds than all the other elements combined.

-There are many different allotropes of pure carbon: from amorphous carbon, to graphene, to diamond, to lonsdaleite, to the fullerenes like buckyballs and nanotubes.

-Graphene really does have tensile strength in the range of one hundred times greater than that of steel. It is an excellent electrical conductor, with some evidence suggesting it may be much better than copper (currently our best conductor).

-Diamond is an excellent electrical insulator, yet conducts heat five times better than silver (the best metallic heat conductor). And, graphene conducts heat even better than diamond does! Diamond’s compressive strength is estimated at over 400 gigapascals while steel is in the range of 100-400 megapascals (1000 times less).

- According to theoretical calculations lonsdaleite really is much harder than diamond.

-Both graphene and diamond can be semiconductors in certain orientations or upon doping.

What if, instead of our current 3D printers, making mostly nonfunctional “models” out of single materials (mostly plastic) we had a ‘printer’ that laid down the various allotropes of carbon, utilizing the magnificent properties of the various forms of our sixth element to create devices that can do things we haven’t even dreamed of yet…

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Nora Dahners, Kerry McIntyre, Allen Dietz and Kat Lind, each of whom significantly improved this story.