The Long Mars (8 page)

The crew gondola itself was extensive, reaching back into the body of the ship from the wheelhouse and Maggie’s sea cabin in the prow: room for ninety crew and passengers to live and work. Bounded by observation platforms, the upper deck contained the crew quarters and such facilities as the galleys, mess rooms, exercise and training bays, and science and medical labs; the lower deck mostly contained stores and life-support gear.

From the inside, the gondola reminded Maggie of nothing so much as the interior of a submarine. With its metal hull – no iron or steel, of course – and airtight inner partitions, armour-plate hatches over the windows, and sealable, self-regenerating life-support system, it was a world away from the fancy gondolas of the big commercial twain liners that still plied the Long Mississippi route between the Low Earths and Valhalla, with their picture windows and hardwood dining tables for the Captain. If the early expeditions into the extreme Long Earth had taught humanity one thing, it was that you couldn’t rely on Datum-like conditions pertaining for ever. Joshua Valienté himself had discovered that when his ship had been wrecked by falling into a Gap, a world where there was no world at all. So the gondolas of
Armstrong
and
Cernan
were built to endure extremes of temperature and pressure, and they could sustain their crews on recycled air and water almost indefinitely, regardless of what horrors were unfolding in the outside world.

Maggie roamed further with Harry, even outside the gondola. She went into the cathedral-like belly of the envelope itself, within the aluminium frame, clambering up ladders and along gantries in the smoky light admitted by the fine translucent hull. The ship carried no ballast; it adjusted its lift by means of huge artificial lungs, into which additional helium could be forced from compressed stores. In all, it was able to lift more than six hundred tons.

The ship’s main power came from a compact fusion reactor hung from the structural frame at the stern, a good distance from the habitable sections to reduce radiation risks, its weight balancing the big gondola. The engine room itself was heavily armoured and shielded, designed to survive even a high-velocity crash. At the very crest of the envelope was a bay containing observational gear, antennas, a small atmospheric lab, drone aircraft and even nanosat space launchers – and a bubble observatory, a particularly striking location from which the whole of the
Armstrong
could be seen, stem to stern.

Such tours were a joy. Oh, there were plenty of small technical glitches to fix aboard each boat. But the engineering stuff was almost
fun
, compared with the issues with the flesh and blood passengers . . .

Unlike the
Franklin
, with its relatively small and tight-knit Navy crew, on this trip Maggie had enough civilian academics aboard the two ships to man a small university, covering sciences such as geography, astronomy, ethnology, climatology, mineralogy, botany, ornithology, zoology, cosmology. And smarter people were
always
harder to command.

Take the problem of the trolls, for instance.

For five years now Maggie had kept her little family of trolls on board her vessels, because they were
useful
. Trolls had evolved out in the Long Earth. Through their ‘long call’ they were in touch with their kind throughout the stepwise worlds. They could even sense some breeds of danger coming well before most humans could respond, such as the imminence of Jokers – anomalous and often hostile worlds in the Long Earth chain. Plus trolls were good, and willing, at heavy-lift jobs of all kinds. Plus their very presence promoted an image of diversity and acceptance which Maggie thought was important to her wider mission of being a kind of ambassador of the central nation and its values to the far-flung Long Earth colonies. And
plus
, dammit, it was Maggie’s ship and what she said was the law.

But that didn’t stop some crewmen from having problems. The trolls stank, they were noisy, they were dangerous animals loose inside the security cordon of the ship, and blah blah. Maggie had found ways to deal with this. Midshipman Jason Santorini had been with her a long time; he was no high-flyer but was a reservoir of common sense. She’d given him the task of organizing social events involving the trolls – noisy singalongs, for instance. He worked up briefing packages showing how useful the trolls had been aboard the
Franklin
. He’d even had the bright idea of restricting access to the trolls of an evening, when they preferred to huddle up in a corner of an observation lounge and sing, to winners of a prize in a performance-merit competition. Sailors and marines were competitive by nature; anything you had to work at to win had to be worth having, right?

She knew she had a handle on the issue of the trolls when she came upon a mass choir of Navy and marines, joining in with the trolls in the observation lounge in singing a sweet, silly round about feeling good, feeling bad, feeling happy, feeling sad . . .

But then there were the Chinese.

A few days further into the flight, Chief Engineer Harry Ryan asked Maggie to come down to a particularly exotic engineering sub-department: Artificial Intelligence. Contained in vats of Black Corporation gel, enmeshed in fibre-optic cable, here were the dreaming artificial minds who oversaw most of the ship’s functions, but whose key role was to step the
Armstrong
across the new worlds – for only sapient minds could step. To Maggie, who had to scrub up to operating-theatre cleanliness standards before even being allowed in here, this was an eerie, somewhat frightening place. What were these manufactured minds thinking, all around her, right now? Were they aware of her presence? Did they resent their enslavement to her purposes?

‘Captain?’

‘Sorry, Harry.’ She tried to focus on her Chief Engineer. ‘You were telling me about—’

‘Bill Feng.’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘Look, the guy may have been a big cheese on board the
Zheng He
.’

‘More than that, surely. He was the co-designer of all this. The beefed-up stepper technology they’ve now given us to co-develop.’

‘Yeah, maybe. Big shot back home. And his English is good—’

‘Mother from Los Angeles. Which is why he’s called Bill.’

‘That’s what I hear. But, Captain, he has his damn nose in everything. He has to be
there
, at every component test, every routine tear-down, every watch briefing, every handover—’

‘Always there, in
your
engine room.’

Harry was a big, bluff man, with hands the size of a troll’s, it looked like, that belied a delicacy of touch when it came to his precious engines. ‘That’s about the size of it, Captain. Look, I know what you’re thinking. I’m a territorial asshole. It’s just—’

‘Not at all. It’s your domain. I need you to run this place the way you want to. And if Commander Feng is interfering with that we both have a problem. But on the other hand, Harry, he’s flown with ships of these new designs across twenty million worlds – that’s on the missions we’ve heard about, maybe more covertly. He ought to be a useful resource. And, look – you know how things are on the Datum, still. You have family there. Everybody knows how much assistance the Chinese have been providing. Medical supplies, food, even winter clothing.’

‘So it’s all geopolitics. The Chinese give us handouts and we all have to kowtow?’

‘No,’ she said sternly, ‘and if you use language like that, Commander Ryan, I’ll bust you down to grease monkey, so help me. Harry, we have to be gracious. That doesn’t make us any less as Americans. This is still your engine room, just as much as it’s still my boat. Look, get back to work, sleep on it, and just keep smiling. These things have a way of working out.’

He left, though not with particularly good grace.

Dissatisfied, that night she made a point of hanging around the crew lounges, allowing herself to be bought a couple of beers, watching the dynamics of the Chinese guests with the rest of the crew. Of course they were all different as individuals, one from the other, as people always were. But it was evident that the atmosphere wasn’t right.

The next morning she called in the senior Chinese officer on the ship, a Navy commander, and made a quiet suggestion.

By the morning after that she was speaking to Lieutenant Wu Yue-Sai. Wu was a bright thirty-year-old who had aspirations to be an astronaut, had acquitted herself well on the Chinese ‘East Twenty Million’ expedition – and in particular had done a good job in liaising with English-speaking guests on that mission. By the afternoon Wu had begun new duties in an ‘interface’ role in Harry Ryan’s engine room.

Maggie was gratified that she heard of no more tensions in engineering. And maybe the calm would spread out through the ship from that critical node.

Maggie was the kind of commanding officer who believed in letting issues surface and be resolved as naturally as possible, rather than by her diktat. Mostly it worked out. If any individual didn’t get the message, he or she could always catch a slow boat back home for reassignment.

But when Maggie’s Executive Officer, Commander Nathan Boss, asked to see her, it wasn’t anything to do with trolls, or relations with the Chinese. So Maggie’s cat warned her anyhow.

‘Then what?’

‘The most useful summary is – weaponry.’ Sitting on her desk in Maggie’s sea cabin, Shi-mi was ghost white. Her voice was liquid human feminine, though reduced in timbre by her small frame.

Weaponry? Maggie wondered what she meant by that. There were plenty of weapons aboard the
Armstrong
and
Cernan
; the two airships were military craft. She wanted to ask Shi-mi to expand – but time ran out, and Nathan’s soft knock sounded at the door.

Executive Officer Nathan Boss was a competent, solid officer who’d been with her for several years and was overdue for promotion; Maggie suspected he lacked an edge to his ambition. Whatever, she was glad he was on board with her now. Even if he did look disconcerted when he sat down and Shi-mi jumped on to his lap, purring loudly.

‘You ham,’ Maggie said.

‘Sorry, Captain?’

‘Not you, Nathan. What’s on your mind?’

What was troubling her XO was the presence of Edward Cutler as part of this expedition – not just part of it, he was Captain of the
Cernan
and answerable only to Maggie herself.

‘Look, Captain – there’s the question of morale. Whatever you might say about Captain Cutler, there are crew on this boat and the
Cernan
who were there that day in Valhalla five years back, when he cut loose of his moorings. Remember he tried to get permission to open fire on that crowd of civilians?’

Of course she remembered. ‘It was a rather extreme expression of patriotic duty, I agree.’

He hesitated. ‘Then, Captain, you let me go after the guy when he stormed off alone. You didn’t see what happened later.’

She’d read the reports, though. Cutler, enraged and frustrated, and completely baffled by the Valhallans’ non-violent Gentle Revolution, had finally, and quite without authorization, turned a weapon on unarmed American citizens. Nathan Boss had risked his own life, and indeed his own career, by tackling him with a play straight out of a college football manual. Nathan knew her report on the affair had been thoroughly approving in regard of his own actions; she needed to say nothing more about that aspect now.

‘The point is, Captain, plenty of the crew saw me take the guy out too. Fox, Santorini . . .’

‘You’re thinking of the effect on morale, Nathan. Of seeing a commanding officer behave that way.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘I think we have to trust our shipmates. And we have to give Captain Cutler a chance to grow into his role. Valhalla
was
five years ago.’

‘Yes, Captain.’ Now he looked uncomfortable. He even stroked the cat, to calm his nerves. ‘But that’s not all. Look, I know listening to the scuttlebutt is part of my job. You know I hate it, passing on locker-room bitching.’

She hid a smile. In a way Nathan was too straight-back for his complicated job. But then, she liked him that way. ‘Go ahead.’

‘There’s talk of what became of Captain Cutler after Valhalla. After the investigation he was suspended, he spent some time in a Navy hospital, and then he was transferred to Hawaii, Admiral Davidson’s base. The scuttlebutt says he received specialist training there. And that he got his commission for
this
mission because of some kind of special assignment.’

That was new. ‘By “special”, you mean secret from me.’

‘Uh – yes, Captain.’

Maggie said nothing, thinking that over quietly. It wouldn’t surprise her, if true. The modern Navy was as full of secrets as any other large, complex, budget-laden and weapons-rich organization. It did surprise her a little if it
was
true and the secret had managed to leak out.

‘Whatever the truth about Cutler,’ and she supposed she was letting Nathan into her confidence in admitting she didn’t know any more than he did, ‘we’re stuck with him, and we can’t let this have an adverse effect on morale. That’s where the harm will be done.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll make a joke of it. Sailors are always a gossipy bunch. Soon they’ll pass on to something new.’

‘Good. Thanks for bringing me this, Nathan.’

‘I hope I did right.’

‘You have good instincts. But if you do hear anything more concrete let me know. Anything else?’

‘No, Captain. Thank you.’

When he’d gone, Shi-mi jumped back on to the desk. The cat asked, ‘So what do you think of that?’

‘What do
you
think? I assume you know more than either me or Nathan about this.’

‘Not a great deal more, I assure you.’

‘So there’s something in it? Cutler has some kind of secret assignment – something Davidson is keeping even from me?’

‘Davidson himself may be acting under orders from above.’

‘Why did you say you thought Nathan wanted to talk about weapons? – Oh. You’re thinking of
Cutler
as a weapon?’