Your Most Humble & Obedient Servant
Thorley
There are levels and levels to Thorley that are seldom properly appreciated. In the guise of his consciously affected style he had informed me of what I most needed to know and had done a portion of my dirty work for me. Now Hopie understood why it had been necessary for Thorley to know from Hopie’s own lips the truth about my passion for Amber. Indeed, Hopie’s statement, and her reaction, could not be doubted. There are things that even a Tyrant does not do.
There may be those who suppose Thorley to be my enemy. How little they know!
CHAPTER 10
COMPANY MAN
There had been a number of rallying points of opposition to the Tyrancy, and these intensified as our reforms were implemented. The common man, it seemed, did not really want reform—not when it inconvenienced him. Already editorials were lamenting the good old days of President Tocsin, “the last legitimate leader” of North Jupiter. There was a climate of rebellion that was coming to permeate every level of the society.
I had never realized how unpopular I could get, but I had no doubt of it now. I knew I would be lynched if I walked openly down any hall of any major city-bubble of this section of the planet. Perhaps if I had to control the press, it would have been better, but I refused to do that. So the editorials lambasted me continually, and the people followed, convincing themselves that they were worse off than they had been, despite the manifest fairness of the reforms the Tyrancy had made.
But I was riding the tiger. I could not simply step down; to do so would be to throw the society into chaos and to wipe out the groundwork we were laying for the new society. No revolution is painless, and the Tyrancy was a revolution: a revolution of reform. Once the benefits began to clarify themselves, the common attitude would change. We knew that, and it was what kept us going. But now we were in the darkest siege of the long tunnel, seeming to make very little progress.
The day I received Thorley’s missive, the bubble shook with the force of a nearby detonation. It rocked us all. In moments we learned the cause: A missile had been launched at the bubble, one with a black-hole shield similar to that of a sub but smaller. That protected it from most observation, but if it had collided with the bubble, it would have caused a deadly implosion. The Navy had intercepted it, but this one had come uncomfortably close. An investigation would be made to ascertain the source and why it hadn’t been intercepted long before becoming an actual threat to the bubble; someone’s head would roll.
“But we just can’t be secure from this type of threat,” Spirit informed me seriously. “You are too much of a target, Hope, and the threats come too thickly, from too many directions. Some of the ones we have stopped without fanfare have been frightening: poisoned food, flawed oxygen supply, hypnotic devices—anything. It isn’t enough, to put away the perpetrators; more keep developing. Sooner or later we’re apt to be overwhelmed.”
“What’s our best course, then?” I asked.
“I think it’s time to remove the main target. You are the Tyrant; the people are convinced that if they can just get rid of you, all their problems will abate. It isn’t true, of course, but it’s hard to argue effectively against that sort of ignorance.”
Remove the main target. “So it’s time for me to go into hiding,” I said, hardly surprised.
“At least until the furor subsides,” she agreed. “Once the policies start taking proper hold and things improve—”
“I feel as if I’m running out,” I complained. “The budget is further out of balance than ever, and that’s my—”
“You won’t be running out. You will just be going to work on a more specific aspect. Our biggest present problem is industry: we nationalized companies in key industries, but when we used them as our Employers of Last Resort, they became not more efficient but less efficient. We are taking enormous losses on those companies, and that isn’t going to change until we can make them efficient—with the Last Resort employees.”
“Get me some really good managers, and we’ll get them efficient,” I said.
“The best managers fled to private enterprise,” she reminded me. “Unless we want to get coercive, we’ll have to develop our own from scratch—and that takes time. Which is where you come in now.”
“I don’t know how to manage a company!” I protested.
“You’ll learn. Reba set it up. For over a year a man answering your general description has been shifting from job to job and company to company, showing proficiency but moving on when he was unable to get promotions fast enough to suit him. He blew the whistle on one inefficient practice and was eased out of a bubble company.”
“But we protect whistle-blowers!”
“We try to protect whistle-blowers,” she said. “The company found another pretext to suppress him, so nothing could be proved. That is often the way of it. So he has a reputation for erratic brilliance, but he can’t get along with management.”
“Put him in as management,” I said. “See what he’s made of.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “You will enter our Jupiter Bubble Company as a trainee manager, slated to run the company after you master the details of its operation. You should be able to make something of it, and then to make something of the other Jupiter companies. That will turn the tide on the economy and the budget.”
“Just like that!” I exclaimed wryly.
“As you said, get some good managers ...”
• • •
The front offices of the Jupiter Bubble Company were palatial, but I saw them only briefly. I was introduced as Jose Garcia, an ambitious Hispanic who was smart enough but not patient enough, now granted the position of prospective Manager of Jupiter Bubble, provided I could master the business. It was very like a patronage plum, because the Tyrant was known to favor whistle-blowers and Hispanics, and the prior management of the company was not particularly pleased. However, the Tyrant had Spoken, so they had to tolerate me, hoping I would foul up badly enough to be displaced before I assumed the actual power.
Not the most delightful situation, but it was evident that despite my similarity to the form and age of the Tyrant himself, no one even thought of connecting me with him. Minor spot surgery had been done on my face to change its configuration, so that I simply didn’t look like the Tyrant despite being fairly close. My throat had also been treated, so that my voice had a different timbre and was not recognizable as that of the Tyrant.
Amber was with me, also subtly modified. Her hair had been changed in color, length, and styling, and her nose and mouth as well. In fact, she now resembled my lost love Helse remarkably closely. Was that coincidence, or Spirit’s teasing design, or my imagination? Did it matter? She remained Amber to me, and her revised appearance did not bother me, and it did protect her from possible recognition. She was now to be called Amena, close enough to be familiar, far enough to eliminate the possible connection. She was my underage girlfriend: before the Tyrancy, relations with her would have been considered statutory rape, but now they were legitimate because she was nubile and consenting. My prior association with her, in the mock identity, had been the reason given for my disfavor; though the association was legal, it remained socially awkward, and a company was not required to promote those who were in such poor favor with their peers that a managerial position would be unlikely to work.
We were rapidly shunted to the most basic aspect of company business: prospecting. I was supposed to gain experience from the bottom up, and this was taken literally. I found myself with Amber (I have no need to call her Amena here, so am not bothering) in a mini-scoutship. It had facilities for two, for a month at a time: food, water, air, energy, sleep, entertainment. Now, this might sound like fun, but in fact it was not considered so.
For one thing, the prospect-ship was cramped. There were no passages; there were crawlways. No separate kitchen or bathroom: one tiny, chamber served both capacities. It was assumed that since the ship had to be under ac
celeration for the kitch/head facilities to work properly, one person would be piloting while the other did the job here. Thus the merging of plumbing made sense—to an executive who didn’t have to use it. Food prepared here was, in the vernacular, termed fart-fare. Mark one item to be corrected when I had power.
“It facilitates the processing of garbage,” I explained wryly to Amber. “You can put it in one end and out the other without having to move.”
She smiled, because this was evidently meant to be funny, but she didn’t really understand. She was not, and would never be, a “clever” type of woman. She was just glad to be alone with me at last. I hoped she would not find the next month excruciatingly tiresome.
The operation of the ship was simple enough for any duffer. I would have had no problem regardless, because of my time in the Navy, but this facilitated things for Amber. She was able to use a joystick to guide it in any direction, a lever to control acceleration. The screen showed a panoramic view of what was outside, with an inset and cross hairs for specific detail. Anything more complicated she could safely leave to me.
Our mission was to locate suitable bubbles for exploitation. We were in the bubble-band of Jupiter, the nether region of the atmosphere where a combination of density, temperature, and turbulence caused substances to be dredged from the hellish interior and precipitated out before settling down. I am no chemist, so this may be somewhat garbled, but my understanding is that among those exotic substances are carbon, silicon, aluminum, tungsten, and tantalum, and that some of the precipitates are natural crystals of exceeding hardness. Not as hard as diamond but harder than sapphire. It is said that the bubbles are formed of carborundum, but I believe it is more complicated than that, with an admixture of boron. At any rate, that material is just about the toughest stuff extant in nature. It isn’t economical to form it in such quantities in the laboratory, considering the high pressure required and the rarity of the trace elements at our level of the atmosphere. Nature does it best, so we harvest it wild.
• • •
Of course, nature doesn’t form many perfect hollow spheres of enormous size. The bubbles were seeded centuries ago and allowed to grow. Again I am hazy on the technical detail and can only say that an enormous number of very small molds were sent out—hardly larger than molecules—crafted in such fashion as to attract deposits of crystallized bubblene (that is, the boron, carborundum, or whatever mix) but with a very special quality. The deposits become unstable beyond a certain size, so that they tend to shed their inner layers even as their outer ones are forming. One might picture a tree, rotting from the center as it puts on growth outside, only more disciplined. Thus the spheres do become hollow and proportionately thinner-shelled as they grow larger. The result is the bubbles, ranging from pea-sized to city-sized.
But the Jupiter atmosphere is large. Though there is a tonnage of bubble formations at this level that can be only crudely estimated, the individual bubbles are spread far apart, and there is a murk of inchoate material that clouds whatever view there might be. Thus, searching for the forming bubbles is like the proverbial needle in the haystack. They are there, but it is a challenge to find them.
That was our job, as prospectors. Once free-lance individuals had prospected for nuggets of gold on the surface of archaic Earth; now they sought spheres in the wilder reaches of the Jupiter atmosphere. Bubblene was just as precious as gold had been; without the bubbles, civilization as we know it would not be possible. Oh, certainly the fundamental breakthrough had been the gee-shield; that made System exploration possible. But the bubbles, combined with the shields, made extended settlement feasible. It was the same on Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune: all had their bubble-bands, and all harvested the bubbles and fashioned them into ships and cities. Nothing but a bubble could withstand the rigors of atmosphere and space, for bubblene was virtually impervious to accidental destruction. Gravel-meteorites merely scratched the superhard surface, and neither heat nor cold (within reason) weakened it. A new bubble was a treasure indeed.
So we quested, but the chances of our discovering a good bubble within a month were small. Some prospectors searched for years before making a decent strike, and some never succeeded. Some died in the effort. But those that succeeded could have their fortunes made, depending on the size and quality of the bubble they staked. Thus there were many volunteers, despite the discomfort and danger; man tends to be foolishly optimistic, or perhaps he just likes to gamble.
Our ship’s hull was of bubblene, of course, and it was thick. The pressure here was about a thousand bars—a thousand times that of Earth-normal. The natural bubbles were porous, so that atmospheric pressure inside equalized that outside, but the ships had to provide and protect the human environment. Implosion was definitely a threat, and I felt it as a kind of claustrophobia, though I knew that the ship was designed to withstand the pressure. I fought the feeling, knowing that it was merely the legacy of my rearing in the relative vacuum of space, where explosion was the threat. I could not afford to be handicapped by emotion. Amber didn’t seem to be aware of the pressure; perhaps she didn’t grasp its nature or extent. I was not about to educate her about it; her ignorance was bliss, in this case.
We proceeded through the soup, and I gave her practice in the handling of the ship. The gee-shield prevented it from descending, even when stationary, but mishandling could still generate mischief. The ship maneuvered by planing with its wings when accelerating, so could lift or descend, and it was theoretically possible to skim too deep and encounter pressure too great for the hull to withstand; it was best to be careful. To turn left or right one merely rotated the ship so that the planes acted sidewise. Simple in theory, sometimes tricky in practice, because of the murk and the turbulence.
Outside all was wind and dust and streamers of gas. Sometimes we spotted larger blobs of substance, but they were generally misshapen, useless for our purpose. Some ships were harvesters of amorphous material, scooping it in and carrying it up to the factories for processing. Such mining was big business. But we were going for bigger game.
After several hours I was satisfied that Amber had the hang of it; henceforth we could take turns piloting. Normally one pilot was on duty at all times, even if not actively searching; it was prudent to keep an eye out for both danger and bubbles. Most discoveries were actually random, though innumerable search systems existed that supposedly enhanced the chances. The longer someone looked, and the more sharply he looked, the more likely he was to score: that was the essence.
But at the conclusion of this first shift we put the ship on auto-pilot, for we had another matter in mind. We had not before had the chance to be completely alone and private, together. We wanted to make love.
One might suppose that this would be a simple matter. It was not. First, there was the social aspect. Remember, at this time Amber was just fifteen years old, and though she had the body of a young woman, there were ways in which she remained childlike. I wanted her, in part, because of that youth, so like that of Helse when I had known her. But I was fifty-two and conscious of the disparity in ages. We had made love many times and in many ways, via the helmet, but this was real and therefore hazardous in its own special way.
Second, there was the physical aspect. This was a ship designed to support two—in different places. Sleeping was definitely conceived as a solitary matter. The bedroom cell was a niche that opened from a rear wall, just about big enough for one large man or, possibly, two small ones. We discovered that we could, by dint of much effort and discomfort, jam in together, but the fit was so tight that sexual activity was really not feasible. I suppose if a man and a woman were experienced, so that each knew exactly what contour fitted what and were not ambitious for mutual satisfaction, it could be done. That was not the case with us. We wanted to do it gently and well. That pretty well eliminated the bed.
That left the kitch/head: not the most conducive locale. If one person sat on the vac-pot, there was just room for the other to stan
d. I looked at the pot, disgusted, but didn’t see a much better way.
“This isn’t the way I wanted it to be the first time,” I said. “But ...”
She smiled, not concerned. Amber never complained about anything.
She retreated to the entry tunnel, giving me room to strip. When I was naked, I sat on the pot giving her room. And you know, as her clothing came off, this awkward situation brought a powerful sense of déjà vu. Seeing a young woman’s private parts in the chamber for natural functions—that was the way it had been with Helse when I had had to help her urinate in free-fall. You see, Helse had masqueraded for safety’s sake as a boy and therefore had to use the male facilities, and they were awkward for a woman to use in free-fall. So I had had to hold her to the funnel while she squatted to relieve herself. It had been a tremendously stimulating experience for me, at age fifteen, the guilt of my reaction adding to the excitement. The facility for elimination differed here, being designed to be used while under gee, but the similarity of situation was close enough to evoke the same effect in me. In an instant I had a rigid erection.
Amber stared. I realized, belatedly, that this was the first time she had seen such a thing in life. In the helmet she had seen it many times and handled it and felt it inside her, but this was a different level of experience. She paused, evidently daunted, and I suffered a siege of embarrassment. Perhaps I should have arranged to do this in darkness this first time.