Anvil of Stars

"Did you slick Paola Birdsong?" Ariel asked. Martin picked up his tray of food and walked away from her, face pinking.

"Did you?" she asked i

He sat, got up when she sat next to him, moved to another table, started to get up again as she kept pace with him, and finally dropped the tray a few inches to the table, slapped the tabletop once with his fist, and said, "Who the hell cares?"

Martin ate and tried to ignore her.

"I'm not trying to be nosy," Ariel said. "I want to know what it means to be devoted to someone for a long time, even after they're dead."

Martin found the situation intensely uncomfortable. "I'd like to eat in peace," he said.

"I'm sorry. I'm bothering you. I apologize." She got up, carried her tray out of the cafeteria, and left him feeling guilty, mad, and confused.

That sleep, he cried again, thinking of Theresa, but he did not remember any dreams.

Two moms appeared in the schoolroom for the next crew tenday report. There had been no a

Hans a

Hakim had five minutes to squeeze in a report on science.

Je

"Maybe you'd like to be in on what we're doing," she said. She sounded almost conspiratorial, but he could not imagine Je

"About what?" he asked.

"The noach. We're having a little conference to share results."

"Oh." He had pla

"Sure," he said.

"In the nose in ten minutes. Hakim Hadj, Giacomo Sicilia and Thorkild Lax are coming."

"I'll be there," he said.

Hakim, Giacomo, Thorkild and Je

The reports were wrong.

Je

Hakim spent a few minutes projecting graphics for Martin, filling him in on the key points.

Je

"We've been trying to piece together an overview of Benefactor technology," Thorkild began. "Je

Giacomo smiled.

"You might say they work together intimately," Thorkild added. Hakim clapped his hand on Giacomo's shoulder as if in congratulations. Je

"Hakim has put on the siding and I've painted," Thorkild concluded. "Mind you, none of what we've come up with has much meaning for our mission. It's all theoretical—"

"I disagree," Je

"Which I was about to add," Thorkild said.

"I think it could have a lot of meaning for the Job," Je

Martin rubbed his nose. "So what's the house look like?"

Hakim projected a list. "First, the noach—instantaneous communication at a distance. This is made possible by confusing two particles—in this case, atomic nuclei—into 'believing' that they are the same. Second, actually creating a particle at a distance—deluding the matrix into believing that a particle exists at a certain position, and has a certain history attached. This could be how fake matter is created—resistance to pressure, but no resistance to acceleration; extension, but no mass."

"Noach could be the key to all of this," Je

"What do you mean by a particle 'believing' something?" Martin asked.

"The particle's bit makeup determines its behavior," Hakim said. " 'Behavior' is a bad word, like 'belief.' We do not think particles are alive or think. But they do exhibit simple behavior, of course—a nature or character, which is the same for all similar particles, and a history in spacetime."

"Given that," Martin said, "how do we get to the rest of the abilities in this list?"

"To create fake matter," Giacomo said, "basic elements in the matrix are convinced they have some of the properties of matter. To noach messages, you tamper with the privileged cha

"There could be several ways to convert a particle to an-anti-particle. A boson, approaching a particle, carries information from its source, some of which has already been conveyed by information following so-called privileged bands. The boson also conveys energy, which acts on the particle's data, changing a particular bit sequence."

"Energy is information?" Martin asked.

"Energy is a catalyst for information change. It's information in only a limited sense. To convert a particle to an anti-particle, you can change its bit makeup either by perverting the privileged band information, say by sending it a boson tailored to react falsely, which might compel it to switch a series of bits to be consistent, or by creating a resonance with outside anti-particles."

"Resonance…?"

"Imposing the data of an anti-particle on a particle in another position by making them congruent, coextensive," Hakim said. "It is similar to how the noach works."

"We think," Je

Martin could not keep up with their projected momerath, or even all of their explanations. "I'll have to take some of this on faith," he said wearily.

"Oh, please no," Hakim said. "Work it out for yourself in private. We may be wrong, and we need criticism."

"Not from me, I'm afraid."

"We are all out of our depth here, actually," Hakim said. "We must not accept this as anything more than playful theory."

Martin poked at a few expressions in the momerath that he could just begin to riddle. "Would they have to have a lot of anti em to convert something else to anti em—match a mass particle for particle?"

"We do not think so," Hakim said. "In Je

"Even at a distance," Thorkild said.

"But just how it's done, we haven't a clue," Je

"Oh," Martin said.

"Neat, huh?" Thorkild asked.

Martin closed his eyes and shook his head.

After, Martin sat alone in an empty quarters space, dabbling with the momerath but not able to concentrate on it, thinking instead about how much the crew had changed in just a few months. They acted like passengers enduring hard times on a down-on-its-luck cruise ship, or like students in a particularly lax high school with a principal too hip for their own good.