perform the experiment?”
“Science is the process of being wrong until you are right. And even being declared right does not insulate you from criticism. The strength of science does not lie in its inherent truth, but in the ability to question its truth without being destroyed for your ideas.”
For the first time since leaving Faraday Quark wiped a tear from his eyes. The interns did not mock him. Ali wrapped his lithe arm around Quark’s shoulder. “Don’t comfort me. I know my place.”
“No you don’t. That is your wellspring of strength.”
Flickering light streamed from under the door of room 382. When Quark walked in Maria and Volt were sitting on the sofa watching a comedy, his head on her bare knee. She threw a blue quilt over her lap and Volt’s head which he threw off as he sat up laughing. They looked at Quark and turned to back to the screen expecting him to pass without a word. When he sat on the recliner beside the couch the pair straightened up like lovers being judged by the girl’s father.
“So what was work like?” Maria said handing Quark a bowl of cubed fruit.
“Yea are you liking robotic accounting?” Volt followed her question before Quark could answer.
“Did you see the telescope my parents sent me? They think I’m working in the core. That’s what I told them. I’m not a bad man. You know. But, but-all I ever wanted-I should- do you think I should-no I am going to, to tell them, the truth. I know they’ll just say ‘keep it, we’re proud of you anyway’ but I-ah”
“Ahhh you’re shy. I gotcha,” said Maria. After a long pause Quark balked at standing and walking away. They had turned to the television, and returned to life without the third.
“Do you think it’s possible to love without hope?” Quark looked at the couple clutching his tablet and therefore Poly. “I love science, but it doesn’t love me back,” a forced laugh came from behind his cracking voice. “Accounting-bots love me, well as best a bot can love a guy, but who can love them?”
“Clearly you’ve not heard of the Voigt-Kampff test,” said Maria.
Maria shuffled places with Volt leaning closer to Quark, “I don’t love the bots. But the trade deck is fascinating. I meet all kinds of interesting people coming and going. Not long ago we had a group of what I suspect were pirates, would you say they were pirates?” she said looking at Volt.
“Maybe. The smelled like pirates,” Volt shrugged and added hastily, “I imagine.”
“You’re going to tell me about Phobos one day mister,” she turned back to Quark and continued, “And then the pirates showed us about smuggling and using AI to hijack radar. Then Captain Dross came down, as angry as you could imagine, and told them, ‘Who do you think you are, musicians? Stop corrupting the young!’”
“They were a ribald bunch, and the deck became quite the fiasco!”
She continued, “And we’ve met ambassadors from the Terran Union. I spoke with three former senators who knew my mom and dad when they were young and Oh my! They had some stories to tell. I’ll never be able to watch my mom bend over again. I’m not kidding.”
Quark didn’t speak, but he did return the first honest smile Maria he had shown Maria since arriving.
“Did you know we met a group of miners from Io? Methane miners. They were renegades I think. They brought up solidified methane to trade for energy blocks. But they did it off the record so the Foundry wouldn’t see any missing income on the end of the cycle business report.”
“I’ve read about the Foundry,” Quark added with a burst of enthusiasm, “renegade scientists?”
She understood where the conversation was going, and in the same moment understood Quark’s isolation. “You didn’t even give the deck a shot. Everyone who tries to speak to you, you ignore them and bury your head in some formula or talk to your AI. So-I’ve got an idea. Come with me and give us a chance,” Maria said taking both men’s hands.
“Aaaah, not now. I’m watching the show,” Volt protested.
“I want to get a little sleep,” said Quark rising from his chair this time sans hesitation.
“Nope nope nope, not falling for it. Both of you. Ahora.”
Violet and ochre light from the crab nebula streamed through the clear acrylic canopy stretching over the Hooke Astrolabe Service Bar. The bar hovered and spun slowly over the observation deck, which in turn overlooked the familiar loading deck. From the teak bar Maria pointed to the beautiful chaos with what was once called ‘some strangeness in the proportion’ below. The SRVs moved like geese evading a predator gliding between freight boxes. “It’s a little bit beautiful isn’t it?” She said in a delicate, awestruck voice.
The rays streaming down caught Quark’s attention. He looked to the stars, then to the deck. He felt a calm, like a boy accepting the razor-like precision upon which the universe was balanced. Below him was his future, on every side were his colleagues. Beside him were friends. When a man becomes a boy it is time to put away childish things. Perhaps, he thought, those childish things sometimes included old friends.
“Can I introduce you to some of the people you work with?” said Volt raising a drink to a man across the bar.
When he returned to the room, Quark decided, it would be appropriate-no mandatory to uphold his values-to write home and explain his true position. But for now a new world awaits. “I would like that.”
The SRVs, general service bots, had come to a halt and lined up along the wall adjacent to the hangar’s energy bubble. The far deck had been cleared and the cargo lined up as if for inspection. And behind the cargo ‘The Black Bird’s’ officer corps had assembled like a roman cohort. They placed their weapons on the ground before their feet.
“Are they surrendering to the cargo?” Quark said sipping his drink and laughing.
“Orbital burden,” said Volt. “Every time we cross a moon or planet’s orbit we have to pay a protection fee to the Solar Rangers to maintain their station. It’s to keep us safe from pirates. We must be nearing Jupiter.”
“I don’t know if we have enough to pay for more than one crossing,” Maria added.
The bar had massed along the side rail looking down in silence. It was nothing new to the accountants and financiers but every stop was in its own way unique and dangerous. Quiet filled the hangar like a dead distress beacon passing a lifeless moon. Finally Captain Dross approached the officers like an officer arranging an already perfect skirmish line.
“The captain has to approve doesn’t he?”
“No. He has to genuflect,” Maria responded after a tense breath.
The Ranger’s Horntail class patrol ship was narrow with mat black finish and yellow stripes outlining edges like a pyramidal chrysalis. The coloring, Quark remembered, was like the wood ants in the perlait trees. Red on top so they can’t be seen while resting, and gray on bottom to hide while flying. The Rangers docked as silently as they had pierced the veil protecting ‘The Black Bird’ from the void.
“They call it worker control,” said Brine pushing his way towards Quark.
A din from antiquated instruments: wrenches, bolt cutters, cat’s claws, ice picks, anything available in the core team’s abandoned lockers, were being loaded into backpacks and strapped beneath the scarlet and gold Terran Union space suits. The core team dressed as diggers. Each scientist stitched a patch that read Ulduvai-Curiosity Excavation site, Titan onto the uniform’s breast pocket.
“There are channels. We can appeal this! Are you all mental?” Maria pleaded with the core teams, Brine, Nugget and Andromeda among them.
“It’s just what I believe,” said Dr. Ibrahimzade. “We’ve lost resources to this ‘burden’ since before I came on board. And now, for the third orbit this voyage, we’ve lost research materials. We’ve lost energy.”
“It is just energy,” said Volt.
“There is no such thing as ‘just energy.’ Energy represents someone’s life do you know that? Every calorie every joule that you use came to you by the sweat of another’s brow. Steal from a ma
n and you steal his life. The captain is a coward. I will not live under threat of force.”
“But there are channels. My mother is a member of the Terran Union Congress.”
Brine approached, “Do you know that the collective noun for apes is a congress? Do you need to know why?”
“That’s a rhetorical appeal. It’s not logical and you’re marching off on a mission-Quark this is your friend.”
“Quark we need your help,” the director said putting his hand on the young man’s shoulder. Those were the words he dreamed of since before he could program in HAYEK-2.2, and now they had come.
“What do you need sir?” he addressed Doctor Ibrahimzade as a member of the core team would.
“I want to know if Polymath can make an entire ship disappear. Not indefinitely. Just for a little while.”
“I’ve never used her to manipulate matter before. I dunno if she could do it. She was meant to get me through topology and real analysis back home. But maybe. If she’s hooked into an electronic system she can remake the building’s architecture.” He pointed at Brine and began, “Back at Faraday we used to-”
“Another day brother.”
“I don’t mean physically.” Ibrahimzade continued, “I mean make a ship vanish from ‘The Black Bird’s inventory. We have maybe a few days to retrieve our resources before they are sold off or given to some pirate.”
“Why did you come to me?” he turned to