The Compleat McAndrew Read online

  UNSUITABLE ENVIRONMENT

  “McAndrew and Roker.” Kleeman’s voice came from the speakers, calm and superior. “There will be punishment unless you return at once.”

  I was at last at the airlock. McAndrew and Wicklund were there. Without speaking, McAndrew turned and pointed towards the wall of the lock. I looked, and felt a sudden sickness. The wall where the line of spacesuits should be hanging was empty.

  “No suits?” I said stupidly.

  He nodded. “Kleeman has been thinking a move ahead of you.” There was a long and terrible pause. “I looked out,” he said at last. “Through the viewport there. The ship’s capsule is still where we left it.”

  “You’re willing to chance it?” I looked at Wicklund, who stood there not following our conversation at all.

  Mac nodded. “I am. But what about him?”

  I walked forward and stood in front of Wicklund. “Do you still want to go with us? Leave the Ark forever?”

  Wicklund licked his lips, then nodded.

  “Into the lock.” We moved forward together and I closed the inner door.

  “Do not be foolish.” It was Kleeman’s voice, with a new expression of alarm. “There is nothing to be served by sacrificing yourselves to space. McAndrew, you are a rational man. Come back and we will discuss this together.”

  Mac swung open the outer airlock door. The air was gone in a puff of ice vapor. I saw the capsule at the top of the landing tower. To reach it we had to traverse sixth meters of the interstellar vacuum.

  BAEN BOOKS by Charles Sheffield

  The Compleat McAndrew

  Convergent Series

  Transvergence

  The Mind Pool

  Proteus in the Underworld

  Borderlands of Science

  My Brother’s Keeper (forthcoming)

  THE COMPLEAT MCANDREW

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2000 by Charles Sheffield

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  ISBN: 0-671-57857-X

  Cover art by Dru Blair

  First printing, April 2000

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgements

  Portions of this work have appeared previously in revised form, as follows:

  “Killing Vector,” © UPD Publications, 1978

  “Moment of Inertia,” © Davis Publications, 1980

  “All the Colors of the Vacuum,” © Davis Publications, 1981

  “The Manna Hunt,” © Davis Publications, 1982

  “Rogue World,” © Mercury Press, 1983

  “Shadow World (The Hidden Matter of McAndrew),” © Davis Publications, 1992

  “The Invariants of Nature,” © Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1993

  “Out of Focus,” © Charles Sheffield, 1999 (first appeared in SF Age)

  “The Fifth Commandment,” © Charles Sheffield, 1999 (first appeared in Analog)

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  First Chronicle:

  Killing Vector

  Second Chronicle:

  Moment of Inertia

  Third Chronicle:

  All the Colors of the Vacuum

  Fourth Chronicle:

  The Manna Hunt

  Fifth Chronicle:

  The Hidden Matter of McAndrew

  Sixth Chronicle:

  The Invariants of Nature

  Seventh Chronicle:

  Rogueworld

  Eighth Chronicle:

  With McAndrew, Out of Focus

  Ninth Chronicle:

  McAndrew and the Fifth Commandment

  Appendix:

  Science & Science Fiction

  Bonus Short-story

  Tenth Chronicle:

  McAndrew and the Law

  Introduction

  A glance at the copyright dates on the stories in this book shows that McAndrew has been with me for almost as long as I have been writing fiction. My own manuscript notes make that point even more clearly: the first piece of fiction that I ever published appeared in the April, 1977 issue of Galaxy magazine. The handwritten date on the first page of the manuscript of “Killing Vector,” my first McAndrew story, is just two months later: June 15, 1977. Since then, at apparently random intervals ranging from a few weeks to a few years, I have produced another tale of Arthur Morton McAndrew and his long-time and long-suffering companion, Jeanie Roker.

  What’s the fascination of these characters for me, and why do I return to them again and again? As a related question, is there any pattern to the stories?

  First, let me point out that the order in which they appear in this volume is not the order in which the stories were written. Chronologically, the order would be “Killing Vector,” “Moment of Inertia,” “All the Colors of the Vacuum,” “The Manna Hunt,” “Rogueworld,” “Shadow World,” “The Invariants of Nature,” “Out of Focus,” and “The Fifth Commandment.”

  The most obvious point about these stories is that each revolves around some central issue of science. I go into that subject in detail in the Appendix at the end of the book. Whenever I become interested in something, especially when that something involves physics and astronomy, a McAndrew story is likely to emerge from my hindbrain.

  That explains the chosen themes, but not McAndrew himself. I might suggest that he is some form of alter ego, the me that I wish I were, except that others have already assigned that role to Behrooz Wolf (of Sight of Proteus, Proteus Unbound, and Proteus in the Underworld).

  Of course, I may have an alter ego suffering from multiple personality disorder. However, my better guess is that McAndrew is an excuse. I derive great pleasure from sitting around, reading and calculating on matters of no earthly value and importance. I do this happily for hours and days, limited only by the arguments of conscience that I ought to be doing something useful and productive. To give one example, I have for the past five years tried, sporadically and unsuccessfully, to analyze a particular mathematical game. I can state the game simply, and to avoid (or possibly create) reader frustration I may as well do so. Two players, A and B, take turns throwing a die. There is a probability p that the die will show a score of 2, and a probability of (1 - p) that the die will show a score of 1. Given a whole number N, what is the probability that player A will be the first to reach a score of at least N?

  I cannot justify wasting so much time on such a trivial game, except to use the all-work-and-no-play defense. However, if an area of apparently useless interest can one day become the basis for a McAndrew story, I have a rationale for my actions. Surely, if I write and publish a story, no one can say that all my preliminary reading and calculating was pointless.

  As for an overall pattern to the stories, I do see a general trend. However, I suspect that the trend mirrors changes not in science but in me. If I had to categorize myself at the time I wrote “Killing Vector,” it would be as a practicing scientist whose knowledge of science fiction was mainly as a reader, a person who despite some first-hand experience of America and Americans was basically English, with an English wife and children. Today, twenty-one years and four or five million published words on, I would describe myself as a writer with a strong amateur interest in science; a person mostly
American, with an American wife and children, albeit also a person with strong social and family ties to England and the English. And, a fact not to be dismissed, I am twenty-one years older. I am rather less interested in science, and more interested in people.

  These changes affect the stories. When first we meet him, McAndrew the scientist is all there, but I don’t think I could in the early tales ever have given him a child (as in “Rogueworld”), and still less a mother (as in “The Fifth Commandment”). That last story also points out an implicit element in most of the earlier stories: the relationship between Jeanie Roker and McAndrew is in some ways that of parent-child. He is the small boy whose rash actions lead him into trouble, she is the responsible and experienced adult who gets him out. I think that’s who I would really like to be, the curious child who is not quite responsible for his own actions. That is the reason why I continue to write about Arthur Morton McAndrew.

  Two other brief answers to questions: Will I ever write a McAndrew novel? An e-mail correspondent pointed out that although there are references to McAndrew in others of my novels, he has never had one of his own. My answer is, McAndrew will get a novel when I run across a neat scientific idea so large and complex that I can’t get a handle on it in a story of ten to twenty thousand words.

  And finally, is this really the Complete McAndrew, as the title suggests?

  To this, I can only offer the Clintonian reply: it all depends on how you define the word, is. Certainly, at this time there exist no other McAndrew stories, so what you have is the complete McAndrew. Equally certainly, there will in the future be fascinating scientific ideas that just jump up and down, crying out, “Me, me, write about me.”

  I’m not sure I will be able to resist their pleas. But “The Incomplete McAndrew” makes a poor book title.

  FIRST CHRONICLE:

  Killing Vector

  Everyone on the Control Stage found a reason to be working aft when Yifter came on board. There was maximum security, of course, so no one could get really close without a good reason. Even so, we all took the best look that we could manage—you don’t often have a chance to see a man who has killed a billion people.

  Bryson from the Planetary Coordinators’ Office was at Yifter’s elbow. The two men weren’t shackled or anything melodramatic like that. Past a certain level of notoriety, criminals are treated with some deference and even respect. Bryson and Yifter were talking together in a friendly way, although they were in the middle of a group of top-rank security men, all heavily armed and watchful.

  They were taking safety to extremes. When I stepped forward to greet Bryson and his prisoner, two guards carefully frisked me before I could get within hand-kill range, and they stood close beside me when the introductions were made. I haven’t lived on Earth for a long time, and they must have known that I have no close relatives there; but they were taking no chances. Yifter was a prime target for personal revenge. A billion people leave a lot of friends and relatives.

  From a distance of one meter, Yifter’s appearance did not match his reputation. He was of medium height, slightly built, with bushy, prematurely white hair and mild, sad eyes. He smiled at me in a tired, tolerant way as Bryson introduced us.

  “I am sorry, Jeanie Roker,” he said. “Your ship will be filled with strangers on this trip. I’ll do my best to keep out of your way and let you do your job.”

  I hoped he could live up to his words. Since I took over the runs to Titan, I’ve carried most things in the connected set of cargo spheres that make up the Assembly. Apart from the kernels, and we carry a few of those on the outbound leg of every trip, we’ve had livestock, mega-crystals, the gravity simulator, and the circus. That’s right, the circus. They must have had a terrible agent, that’s all I can say. I took them both ways, to Titan and back to L-5. Even with all that, Yifter was still a novelty item. After he had been caught and the rest of the Lucies had gone underground, nobody had known quite what to do with him. He was Earth’s hottest property, the natural target for a billion guns and knives. Until they decided how and when he would come to trial, they wanted him a long way from Earth. It was my job to deliver him to the Titan penal colony, and return him when they got themselves sorted out on Earth.

  “I’ll arrange for you and your guards to travel in a separate part of the Assembly,” I said. “I assume that you will prefer privacy.”

  Yifter nodded agreeably, but Bryson wasn’t having any.

  “Captain Roker,” he said. “Let me remind you that Mr. Yifter has not been found guilty on any charge. On this journey, and until his trial, he will be treated with proper courtesy. I expect you to house both of us here in the Control Stage, and I expect that you will invite us to take our meals here with you.”

  In principle, I could have told him to go and take a walk outside. As captain, I said who would travel in the Control Stage, and who would eat with me—and innocent people were not usually sent to the Titan penal colony, even before their trial. On the other hand, Bryson was from the Planetary Coordinators’ office, and even off-Earth that carried weight. I suppressed my first reaction and said quietly, “What about the guards?”

  “They can travel in the Second Section, right behind the Control Stage,” replied Bryson.

  I shrugged. If he wanted to make nonsense of Earth’s security efforts, that was his choice. Nothing had ever happened on any of my two-month runs from Earth to Titan, and Bryson was probably quite right; nothing would happen this time. On the other hand, it seemed like a damned silly charade, to ship twenty-five guards to keep an eye on Yifter, then house them in a separate part of the Assembly.

  Yifter, with an uncanny empathy, had read through my shrug. “Don’t worry about security, Jeanie Roker,” he said. He smiled again, that tired, soothing smile that began deep in his sad, brown eyes. “You have my assurance, I will be a model prisoner.”

  He and Bryson walked on past me, into the main quarters. Was that really Yifter, the bogey-man, the notorious head of the Hallucinogenic Freedom League? It seemed hard to believe. Three months earlier, the Lucies—under Yifter’s messianic direction—had planted hallucinogenic drugs in the water supply lines of most of Earth’s major cities. An eighth of the world had died in the resulting chaos. Starvation, epidemic, exposure, and mindless combat had revisited the Earth and exacted their age-old tribute. The monster who had conceived, planned, and directed that horror was difficult to match with Yifter, the seemingly mild and placid man.

  My thoughts were quickly diverted to more immediate practical matters. We had the final masses of all the cargo, and it was time for the final balancing of the whole Assembly. One might assume that just means balancing the kernels correctly, since they out-mass everything else by a factor of a million. But each Section containing a kernel has an independent drive unit, powered by the kernel itself. We leave those on Titan, and travel back light, but on the trip out the dynamic balancing is quite tricky.

  I reviewed the final configuration, then looked around for McAndrew. I wanted him to review the balance calculations. It’s my responsibility, but he was the kernel expert. I realized that he hadn’t been present when Yifter came aboard. Presumably he was over on one of the other Sections, crooning over his beloved power sources.

  I found him in Section Seven. The Assembly is made up of a variable number of Sections, and there would be twelve on this trip, plus the Control Stage. Until we accelerate away from the Libration Colony station, all the Sections are physically connected—with actual cables—to each other and to the Control Stage. In flight, the coupling is done electromagnetically, and the drives for the powered Sections are all controlled by a computer on the Control Stage. The Assembly looks like a small bunch of grapes, but the stalks are nonfunctional—there are no cables in the System that could take the strains, even at lowest acceleration. Moving among the spherical Sections when we’re in flight isn’t easy. It means we have to cut the drives, and turn off the coupling between the Sections. That’s why I thought the i
dea of having Yifter’s guards in a different Section was so dumb—from there, they couldn’t even reach the Control Stage when the drives were on.

  I wanted McAndrew to check the configuration that we would hold in flight, to see if he agreed that the stresses were decently balanced among the different Sections. We never run near the limit on any of them, but there’s a certain pride of workmanship in getting them all approximately equal, and the stresses as low as possible.

  He was standing on the ten-meter shield that surrounded the Section Seven kernel, peering through a long boresight pointed in towards the center. He was aware of my presence but did not move or speak until the observation was complete. Finally he nodded in satisfaction, closed the boresight cap, and turned to me.

  “Just checking the optical scalars,” he said. “Spun up nicely, this one. So, what can I do for you, Jeanie?”

  I led him outside the second shield before I handed him the trim calculations. I know a kernel shield has never failed, but I’m still not comfortable when I get too close to one. I once asked McAndrew how he felt about working within ten meters of Hell, where you could actually feel the gravity gradient and the inertial dragging. He looked at me with his little, introspective smile, and made a sort of throat-clearing noise—the only trace of his ancestry that I could ever find in him.

  “Och,” he said. “The shields are triply protected. They won’t fail.”

  That would have reassured me, but then he had rubbed his high, balding forehead and added, “And if they do, it won’t make any difference if you are ten meters away, or five hundred. That kernel would radiate at about two gigawatts, most of it high-energy gammas.”

  The trouble was, he always had the facts right. When I first met McAndrew, many years ago, we were taking the first shipment of kernels out to Titan. He had showed up with them, and I assumed that he was just another engineer—a good one, maybe, but I expected that. Five minutes of conversation with him told me that he had probably forgotten more about Kerr-Newman black holes—kernels—than I was ever likely to learn. I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Gravitational Engineering, in my job I have to, but I’m really no gravity specialist. I felt like an idiot after our first talk. I made a few inquiries, and found that McAndrew was a full professor at the Penrose Institute, and probably the System’s leading expert on space-time structure.