Allotropes Read online

  ***

  Delhi, India—August 5: As it did in Dallas eight years ago, the sport world’s focus has turned to Ell Donsaii. So far this Olympics she’s added a gymnastics team gold. Though no one doubts that she could have won more individual gold in gymnastics, yesterday she entered the Track and Field arena, winning the gold in the 100 meters. She broke the world record in the 100 while doing so. Not just the women’s world record held by Keelaw Fell, but the men’s world record held by Michael Fentis—by nearly a full second, in an event where new records are usually advanced by mere hundredths! Today she’ll be running in the 400…

  “Well Cheryl, what a difference a day makes, eh? Yesterday everyone was offended that Coach Shirley Black had displaced seasoned Team USA competitors who had earned their stripes. She replaced them with Ell Donsaii, an amazing gymnast, no doubt, but someone who had never competed in a track meet at all, much less at this level. In interviews last night, Black said that Donsaii had proven that she could break the women’s world records during a visit to the Olympic training facility in Chula Vista. However, Black has admitted that even she had no idea that Donsaii would be able to destroy the men’s world record as well.”

  “Yes Chuck, and now we’re about to find out what she can do in the 400 meters. Yesterday she ran the 100 final after running two other races, presumably a problem for an athlete with a self-confessed lack of endurance. She’s granted no interviews so we don’t know what her thoughts are regarding her accomplishments so far. In fact no one’s even seen her away from the track. She’s not staying in the dorms with the other athletes but somewhere away from the Olympic campus. No one seems to know where and, amazingly enough, the paparazzi haven’t tracked her down.”

  “Cheryl, the women are stepping into their blocks… They’re up... And they’re off! Once again Donsaii has exploded out of the blocks in lane one, putting paid to her laughably poor starts in the prelims. My God! Since she’s running the inner lane, you’d be expecting her to catch up to the stagger somewhat on this first curve. She hasn’t just caught up she’s passed everyone! In the back straightaway she’s gaining more and more on them… Now she’s coming into the second curve where the inner lane runners traditionally are still catching up on to their shorter course, instead she’s rocketing farther ahead! Holy crap! She’s about 70 meters ahead of the field and still pulling away! There’s the finish line.

  Ell Donsaii has another gold medal and must own another world record!”

  “Chuck, Donsaii’s coasted to a stop and turned back toward the finish line where bronze medalist Seychelle Eventide is giving her a congratulatory hug. As happened yesterday, the stadium’s official scoreboard has not instantly put up her score like they normally do. Presumably this is because the officials are having a hard time believing the clock and are checking it twice like they did for her 100 meter run.”

  Chuck shouted, “Yes! 39.13! Another world record! Seven seconds better than the women’s world record and nearly four seconds better than the men’s record held by Michael Fentis. This is beyond astonishing!”

  “Chuck,” Cheryl said, “they’ve started showing the race in slo-mo up on the big screens. I have to say that—in slo-mo—Donsaii looks light on her feet. Where the other runners appear to be straining to run at their maximum speed, Donsaii looks flowing, graceful and relaxed. Like someone else out for an easy lope around the park! Watching this makes you feel like she could run even faster if she had to! I… I… wonder if she actually could…?

  ***

  Delhi, India—August 8: As the world watches the Olympics today, almost every eye is turning once again to Ell Donsaii. Over the past two days she’s run the heats and semis for the 200 meters. As in the 100 and 400, she’s come in third in each of those events, just good enough to qualify for the next level. This time, no one doubts she’s saving herself for the final. Yesterday she also qualified for the long jump… and qualified with a women’s world record jump of 8.11 meters (26.6ft)! One can only wonder what she’ll jump today in the finals…

  “Well Cheryl, what kind of surprises do you think Ms. Donsaii has in store for us today? The Olympic committee reports that she’s been tested exhaustively for every banned substance known to man as well as examined extensively by their physicians. They state that she is a completely normal and unenhanced woman in every way, albeit in extraordinarily good condition. Her amazing physical condition is something we can all see in those skimpy track suits. Not bulging with muscle, but very well defined. ‘Ripped’ in common parlance. Everyone now expects her to set a new men’s as well as women’s record in the 200, the question is, ‘what will she do in the long jump?’ Was her women’s world record yesterday the best she can do?”

  “Chuck, some people have been pointing out the enormous distances she’s covered in some of her gymnastic routines when she wasn’t even trying to jump as far as she could. On the other hand, those leaps were made on ‘sprung’ gymnastic equipment so they may not be comparable. We’ll just have to wait and see. Whatever happens, there is no doubt now in most people’s minds that she’s set her sights on all four of Michael Fentis world records. I would say that calling this particular lady out—was not his best move.”

  “Hah! You can bet I’d never want to piss that woman off! I’m much too grateful for what she’s done for our world. As almost everyone knows, sprinter Michael Fentis has led a personal crusade to question her athleticism, to debunk the rumors that she runs faster than he does and to generally and vulgarly belittle her accomplishments. Throughout, despite his tirades and offensive language, she has, publicly at least, complimented his achievements and repeated her hope that one day he’d consent to give her the autograph she first asked for eight years ago at the Dallas Olympics. However, I would say that, by setting out to demolish his world records she has officially put him on notice that she is ‘not pleased.’”

  “Here’s Urai Fenbassa, the expected gold medalist for the women’s long jump. Well, she was the expected gold medalist until Donsaii’s jump yesterday. Fenbassa had jumped close to the previous world record in two of her past meets and is rumored to have broken it in practice. Here she goes. Oh! That looks like an excellent jump! The judges are measuring… 7.84 meters! That would have been a world record before Donsaii’s 8.11 meter jump yesterday. She’s likely guaranteed Senegal a silver.”

  “Yes Chuck. That would have been an amazing jump two days ago. Now Donsaii’s stepping up to the runway. They’ve finished smoothing the sand. Here she goes. Oh Lordy! She’s just rocketing down the runway with that unbelievable speed only Donsaii can achieve. She’s launched herself into the air like no one else can… My God! She’s landed far beyond where Fenbassa landed.”

  “They’re putting up the measurement… Sweet merciful… Donsaii’s jumped 10.13 meters. More than a meter beyond Michael Fentis world record of 9.04. She’s jumped more than 33 feet! And… it doesn’t look like she’s going to take her other two jumps… I guess that one was good enough, eh Cheryl?”

  ***

  Delhi, India—August 11: Ms. Ell Donsaii is now up to a total medal count of ten Olympic golds. That would be four gymnastic golds from Dallas and one here in Delhi. Now she’s added golds in the 100, 200, and 400 meter sprints plus the long jump. Then yesterday she anchored Team USA in the 4X100 meters relay, taking a careful handoff before running more than fast enough to catch up to and pass the Jamaicans who had been leading. The Jamaicans had been the expected gold medalists but she brought her team’s baton in far in front of them. She’s fully expected to get another gold medal today in the 4X400…

  Shan’s AI said, “Emma Kenner is calling.”

  “Put her on,” he said, thinking that it must be around midnight back in North Carolina. “Hey Emma, what’s up?”

  “Shan! I can’t reach Ell, is she OK?”

  “Yeah, she’s got her headband off for the 4X400 relay.”

  “Oh! I forgot about the time difference. Allan contacted me because he coul
dn’t reach her. Keldap’s attacking Sigwald.”

  “Crap.” Shan glanced out at the field. Though they were setting up for the relay Ell wouldn’t be available for a while yet. “Allan, give me the feed from Sigwald.”

  His HUD flickered and then Shan was looking at Keldap. Though, of course Shan didn’t really understand Keldap’s expression or body language, he had the feeling Keldap intended to look threatening. Keldap had some kind of a tool in one of his upper manipulators. Another manipulator had what looked like a part of Sigwald in it.

  Emma said, “He’s cut off a part of Sigwald’s foot and has been threatening to cut off more.”

  Allan said, “The piece Keldap is holding up is part of the skirt on Sigwald’s foot. Without it, Sigwald will no longer be able to hover or travel on ground effect.”

  “What’s Keldap been saying?”

  “He’s been demanding to know how to get to the stars.”

  Shan sighed, “The one thing we can’t tell him. Let’s offer again to teach them something else.”

  “What should I offer to teach them?”

  “Ask Keldap what else they might want to know. We may learn something important from what he requests… Emma? Would anything terrible happen if we just abandoned Sigwald? Shut off the lights and power so to speak, and just left them the empty husk of the waldo?”

  “I’ve been wondering about that. What if they could somehow open one of the ports in Sigwald from their end? Of course, all of Sigwald’s ports open into a pipe in near solar orbit that’s really hot to sterilize stuff transiting in either direction, so coming through that port wouldn’t help them much. But what if they fired a laser or something through that port that somehow broke open the near solar tube? If they could send through even one rolled up port of their own, then they’d be able to send through bigger and bigger ports until they had something they could send sigmas through… Or spaceships?”

  “Oh… Shit! That sounds bad. What can we do to keep that from happening?”

  “I don’t know… but I think we should try to negotiate. Meanwhile we should try to think of a way to destroy Sigwald, not just leave him inert there.”

  Shan said, “Allan, say, ‘I am sorry that I do not know how you could get to the stars. I was sent here and do not know how that was done. Is there anything else I could teach you? Something important enough that you would let me go?’ Emma, I think Ell told me that the orbit of that intermediate near solar station is intentionally set to deteriorate into the sun?”

  “Yeah,” Emma said, “but it shouldn’t burn up for another year or so.”

  “Is there a way to decelerate it so it will deorbit faster?

  “Let’s ask Allan.”

  Allan came on, “Keldap says the only thing they want to know is how to get to the stars. He doesn’t believe that Sigwald could have come here to another star without knowing how he got here, at least in principle. He has begun to cut the front off of Sigwald’s other foot.” Typical for an AI, Allan continued without a pause, “There is a small rocket motor on the ‘intermediate near solar station’ which I could use to begin decelerating it. It would still take weeks for the orbit to deteriorate sufficiently to reach destructive temperatures.”

  “Start deceleration.” Shan said. After a long pause he mused, “I wonder if we could ‘Brer Rabbit’ Keldap by begging him not to do something that we know would destroy Sigwald, or at least ruin Sigwald’s ports? If we asked him not to do it, and then he did it to spite Sigwald, perhaps we could get what we want.”

  “Sounds good, but I don’t know what to ask him not to do. I mean, we could ask him not to melt Sigwald down to slag but I doubt he’d be fooled by that. We’d need to ask him not to do something that sounded painful but not destructive… I don’t know what that’d be?”

  Neither of them said anything, each thinking furiously. Then Emma said, “Wait, Allan, how high powered is Sigwald’s laser? Could we use it to destroy that tool Keldap is using on Sigwald? Or even to shoot Keldap? Or, wait, even better! Could it cut the graphene straps that are holding Sigwald?”

  “The actual laser is out at Ell’s farm and is quite large. The beam is all that is sent through to Sigwald. There is no doubt that the laser could destroy Keldap’s tool if the tool was stationary. But it would have to be trained on the tool for a few minutes to achieve enough heat to burn through. So if Keldap moves the tool, the laser wouldn’t burn deeply enough to do much damage. Having not trained a laser on a sigma’s flesh it is hard to know how fast it would injure Keldap. Graphene has an extremely high thermal conductivity and depending on the particular molecular structure of the straps it may be very difficult to burn through them.”

  Shan snorted to himself, feeling like Allan had provided a list of not very useful information. Keldap still held the tool in his manipulator but he seemed jittery. Keldap danced from one location to another and the tool moved around so much there would be no way to train the laser on it for long. Suddenly Keldap left the area, heading back into the main part of the repair shed. Shan said, “Allan, quick! Try burning through a graphene strap.”

  Sigwald’s field of view moved as he looked down at his own body and the straps immobilizing it. A red glow appeared on one of the straps but nothing happened. After a moment Allan said, “It would appear that these straps are indeed graphene that has a very high thermal conductivity. Infrared imaging shows that the entire strap is getting hot but the temperature at the spot the laser is striking is not even close to high enough to oxidize the carbon.”

  “Crap!” Shan glanced down from his HUD as the crowd noise around him began to rise. The 4X400 race was on. For a moment he wondered if he should keep working on the Keldap issue and miss the race. He glanced up at his HUD and saw that Keldap hadn’t returned from wherever he’d gone. Guiltily he said, “Emma, if you get any ideas, let me know. The relay’s started and I’m going to watch.”

  “OK,” Emma sighed, “I’m not having any strokes of genius right now.”

  Team USA’s first leg had left them in 3rd place. The second leg had now merged from the separate staggered lanes the race had started in. Shan watched with dismay as two more runners passed the US on the backstretch leaving Seychelle Eventide to take the baton in 5th place. He’d known that the team was weak in the 400 but had thought it would be better than this. Seychelle passed one runner and tried for another but got blocked out and then was stuck running just outside the South African runner around the back turn. She faded without pulling back up to 3rd place and passed the baton to Ell in 4th. The baton pass lost them another spot back to 5th because they were excessively careful, having not had much practice with it.

  Then Ell began to fly.

  Goosebumps ran down Shan’s spine as his new wife stayed out in the second lane on the first turn. Despite her outside lane position she began passing the other runners. She started the back stretch in first place… pulling away.

  On his feet Shan screamed incoherently. Without seeming to strain Ell widened the distance on the other runners to twenty, thirty, then forty meters as she made the back turn. She finished the race 50 meters ahead of the second place team from the Bahamas.

  The crowd thundered and the announcers seemed speechless. After a moment the board popped up a time of 2:49.58 with a little “WR” symbol beside it to designate it as a world record. Shan knew that the men’s world record was 2:51… He shook his head. He really hadn’t had any idea what Ell was capable of when he’d asked her to ‘put Fentis in his place.’”

  Shan watched the other three Team USA runners swarm Ell. They were bouncing up and down and Ell leapt up and down with them. He felt happy seeing her enjoy the victory. He’d had the feeling after her other wins that she looked just a little embarrassed by her easy wins. Admittedly, the way she blew the other runners away did make the Olympics seem like a high school track meet which just happened to have one world class runner competing in it. Ell joined the others in holding up the flag and graciously accepted the
congratulations of runners from other teams.

  Out on the field things wound down very slowly because the women’s 4X400 was the last track and field event so there was no need to clear the arena. Athletes from other events including men started wandering out to shake her hand. They didn’t seem to be jealous or angry—more awestruck in Shan’s impression.

  Eventually Shan glanced up at his HUD remembering that momentous events might be occurring on Sigma Draconis. Keldap’s eye hovered close in Sigwald’s field of vision. Keldap had a glassy bubble over the eye to protect it and seemed to be doing something on Sigwald’s chest though Shan couldn’t see what. “Allan, what’s he doing?”

  “He appears to be trying to remove the large port from Sigwald’s chest.”

  Shan’s heart sank, “Oh crap! Where does that port go?”

  “To the spectroscopic station in the solar orbital station. That’s where we analyzed the fragment of the rimwall to determine it was made of carbon.”

  Shan wondered if it would actually be possible to open the port from that end. He knew that it couldn’t be done here on earth with Ell’s ports. They could only be turned on and off from the primary end. But these guys were aliens! They didn’t seem to be as advanced as he’d expected when he’d first heard that they had a ringworld with the incredible engineering effort that entailed. Obviously they were light years ahead of the human race in regards to structural carbon manufacturing and engineering. Yet they seemed to be far behind in computing? Though, he shivered over Ell’s thought that they might not need computers if they could simply merge enormous numbers of their organic brains to allow them to function as some kind of organic supercomputers.

  What if Keldap had merged to become some kind of organic super genius and derived a method to open Sigwald’s port from his end? “Allan, let me know the moment that Ell puts on her headband.” Shan got up. “Ask Keldap what he’s doing.” Shan started down the stairs toward the lowest level, wondering if there might be some way he could get Ell’s attention?