Things Fall Apart: Chapter 41

Pinnace Zephyr-1, 101 kiloseconds away from Zephyr.

When Singer had been to David's Star before, it had been a port call by Vespa. She had been a midshipman, and had little access to high-detail imaging of their approach. Shore leave to New Anaheim had involved the passenger section of a shuttle, with no windows and no attempt to show the approach on the screen. And anyway, that had been New Anaheim, an old and prominent city, but...not the same.

This was Newer York. This was living history.

The generation ship Dream of Spring had become a ship of Theseus within kiloseconds of its arrival in-system, launching into a long planned repair and refurbishment after almost ten gigaseconds crossing the gulf between Sol and TRAPPIST-1.

That had always been according to plan. Even if the planet they had set their hopes on had proven perfect, it would have taken time to prepare to inhabit it. In the meantime, the ship had held up remarkably well, but if people were going to go on living there, it needed refitting, on a grand scale. So the plan was always to send out mining ships, set up smelters, gather resources, bootstrap industry, all in orbit. Even the first village stations had been part of the plan, so people would have a place to live while their part of the station was being repaired.

The planet had proven less than perfect. Except for a militant minority, most of the travelers chose to stick with what they knew: the ship, which now became a station, and thus, became a city.

"Newer York" was originally a joke. No-one then alive had ever been to New York, though many could trace ancestry there. Yet it came down in fables and songs and stories and media in the vast archives they'd taken with them. Somehow, the joke had become a name which everybody now used, even though every official document associated with the place still called it Dream of Spring.

And now, it was there, laid out in front of them on the big display in the workroom of the pinnace. The first starship; the first extrasolar habitat; the first city-station; the source of nearly all the human diaspora.

At a distance, it looked like nearly every other city-station of scale. A spindle, or barrel, or drum, depending on how you looked at it, was the core of it, based very loosely on an ancient idea proposed by a man named O'Neill. On the surface panels of the spindle's hull, the words Dream of Spring appeared in every known human language, over and over again.

That spindle was the old ship itself, spinning to give its innermost surface 0.25G. The surface was farm and parkland, broken only by necessary buildings and access points. No-one lived there, except during the festival of Sukkot. They lived, and many had worked, in the layers between that and the outer hull.

Radiating out from the spindle were six sets of six spokes, each set terminating in a ring: Bronx, Staten, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Ellis. The rings were far enough out from the body to provide something closer to 0.7G to the people living and walking on their curved floors.

As they approached, the ragged, charred gap in the Bronx Ring also rotated into view. Singer willed herself to observe it as a fact, knowing she had little time for emotion of her own right now. Next to her, Espinoza's eyes were closed, and she felt the grief radiating from him. He was whispering something she could only just hear.

"...b'alma di vra khirutay b'amlikh malkhutay..."

When his eyes opened, she met them with a question in hers. He gave her a small, wry smile. "Kaddish, Captain. I had friends there."

She wanted to say something like, "You still might!" It didn't matter. Surely, people had died there.

The emotion she felt from the other side of her, from Cadotte, was darker. Anger. Almost rage. Far stronger emotions than Singer was used to from them.

Cadotte also met her questioning eyes, and said, "In G-581, it was easier to put it aside. There was nothing left to see, but it's not like I'd ever really looked at the stations themselves much anyway. They could just as easily have been around the other side of the star. I knew they weren't, but it was still easier. Somehow, this..."

It was rotating out of their view, their plot taking them forward past the end of the station as well. They'd be coming into the central docking slot in the spindle, berthing in the large bay that took up the forward eighth of the station's core.

Still, Singer said, "I know what you mean, Lieutenant. The problem is, none of the people who deserve our anger are here."

Cadotte nodded, but said, "I dunno. I think we get to be a little angry at that Donato guy. Not for this, of course, but..."

Singer allowed herself a tight smile. "It's a guttering candle of anger in comparison, but, yes, he's already not my favorite person ever. I want to confer in person with our ambassador before I do anything about it, though."

Cadotte nodded. They were still very tense, but Singer could see their jaw unclench at least.

Then their pinnace rotated laterally in place to orient inward toward the docking slot. Goldsmith and Wasserman were the obvious pilots for this run, the former saying with a genuine smile when asked that she knew the docking protocol here well. Now, she deftly matched the station's rotation, so that the slot became a fixed rectangle of light toward which they moved.

Though a bulkhead separated her from seeing them, she could easily imagine Wasserman watching the maneuver very carefully, determined to be able to do it as smoothly should his turn come.

On the screen, they saw as the boat passed through two gigantic blast doors, into a huge empty drum of a space, with docking piers spaced throughout its inner surface, some occupied, many not. One of the unoccupied ones lit up with a projected number "23", and the flag of the Tau Ceti Treaty Organization, in case Goldsmith failed to take the hint from traffic control which bay was to be theirs.

As they gently maneuvered toward the pier, Singer felt gravity actually releasing its hold. The boat was gradually reducing its artificial gravity so that, when they were moored, they would be fully experiencing the station's spin-gravity.

Then, at last, the cradle had them, clamps clanging into place against the hull, and a gangway tube extended. Singer stood, taking a moment to get her legs set under her in the far lighter gravity. Espinoza and Cadotte followed suit, looking to her expectantly.

She took a breath, and said, "Time to go be diplomatic!" With a smile she did not entirely feel, she turned and led them to the lock.

Newer York, Pier 23 boarding and arrival lounge, 5 Tammuz 2541 AS, mid-afternoon

It had been Admiral Donato's intention to arrive at dockside early, ahead of the others. Still, he was not entirely surprised to see that he had been beaten to it by Yehudit Silverman, Governor-General of the David's Star Republic. Officials in the DSR tended to not dress formally very often, but she had decided this occasion deserved to be an exception, sporting a well tailored suit in a light grey. Black, he knew, was her preferred motif, but might have been taken for mourning colors, and as a specific, pointed message which he knew she had made a deliberate choice not to convey. "Good morning, Yehudit. Are we feeling diplomatic, today?"

Silverman was, in fact, feeling salty, and made that immediately apparent. "Toward our arriving guests, yes. Toward your august personage, not so much. I've seen the recording of your first contact with Zephyr. Really, Jon, was that necessary?"

Donato did not wonder how she'd come to see the record. Tower had been instructed to provide routing for a channel to the ambassador's office from Zephyr. While they would be meeting in person for the first time momentarily, Singer had already likely provided a precis of events leading up to their arrival, and that had undoubtedly included the recording in question.

"Come now, Governor. You have half the Knesset howling for blood, despite every effort we've made to tamp things down. Did you really expect I would just roll out a red carpet and welcome them without some indication of the mood, here?"

Silverman pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. She was used to this man's many foibles by now, but that didn't mean she'd learned to like them all. The Navy Board kept renewing his appointment because he was very good at his job. Being a bit of an asshole was not—quite—a disqualification, the way it was for a more elective, political office like her own.

Aloud, she said, "You could have have used your words."

Donato smiled broadly. "I did." He was still clearly quite pleased with his little joke.

The door to the lounge slid open. They both turned to see Ambassador Ellison come in. Donato's smile turned into a full on grin. A wicked one.

"Brunislava, how good of you to come! You're looking quite sober this afternoon, I must say! What's the occasion?"

Brunislava Ellison did not break the almost marching stride she'd set when she crossed the threshold. She also didn't say a word. She simply bore down upon the man, taller though he was, and smacked him, hard, across the face.

"That, Admiral, should be taken as a formal protest from my government, assuming it still exists, on behalf of Commander Singer and her crew!"

Well, Donato thought, he had not expected Ellison to be amused, either by his conversation with Singer, or by his opening gambit here. Ordinarily, the two of them were friends, and the tease about her recent tendency toward overconsumption, she might have let pass, or even laughed off. When she was already in a lather about Singer? Well, he thought, massaging his face, perhaps he'd earned that.

Making a show of testing his jaw to see if it were broken, he finally said, "That's hardly ambassadorial!"

"It's not, but the worst you can do to me is expel me for it. Singer doesn't deserve the court martial she'd face if she slugged you herself."

Silverman muttered, "One for her side," making it clear that the admiral was quite outnumbered.

The conversation was rescued by the expedient of the tannoy announcing, as cool as if it were any routine passenger ship, "Now arriving, diplomatic pinnace Zephyr One. Please stand clear of the lock."

Silverman took a breath and said, "Time to be diplomatic!" Then Donato, Silverman, and Ellison turned as one, lining up as agreed to greet their arriving guests.