Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

monolithic officer Futurity, just twenty years old,
felt nervous, ineffectual - not just weak, but like a shadow, with no
control over events.
    Futurity lifted his data desk and checked the Ask Politely’s
manifest again. The passenger’s name stood out, highlighted in red:
MARA. No mention of a daughter. ’She’s a refugee. Home for her is
Chandra. The black hole at the centre of the Galaxy.’
    ’I know what Chandra is.’
    ’Or rather,’ Futurity said nervously, ’home is, or was, Greyworld,
a worldlet in orbit around a satellite black hole, which in turn
orbits Chandra - ’
    ’I know all this too,’ said the Captain stonily. ’Get on with it,
acolyte.’
    Tahget had been hired by Futurity’s boss, the Hierocrat, to come
to this processing station in orbit around Base 478. Here he was to
pick up Mara, and other refugees displaced by the Kardish Imperium
from their homes in the Galaxy’s Core, and then carry them on to
Earth, where the ruling Ideocracy had pledged to welcome its
citizens. But Mara had refused to travel on. Because of her, the ship
had been held in orbit around the Base, and the other refugees had
been evacuated and sent back to holding centres on the surface.
    And now it was up to Futurity to sort this mess out. He had no
idea where to start.
    Futurity licked his lips and looked again at the glowing cube on
the Captain’s desk. It was a fish-tank monitor, a Virtual realisation
of the interior of the woman’s cabin. Mara sat on her bunk, as still,
in her way, as Tahget. She was slim, her head shaved; aged
thirty-six, she looked modest, sensible, undemanding. Her small
suitcase sat unopened on top of the low dresser that was the cabin’s
only other significant piece of furniture. The locked door was
blocked by an upturned chair, a trivial barricade.
    And before her on the floor was the reason she had been able to
impose her will on a starship Captain, hundreds of refugees and at
least three interstellar political entities. It was a blocky tangle
of metal and polymer, an ugly sculpture quite out of place in the
mundane shabbiness of the cabin. You could clearly see where it had
been cut out of the weapons pod of some wrecked ship. It was a bomb,
a monopole bomb. Dating from the time of the Coalition and their
galactic war, it was at least two thousand years old. But the
Coalition had built well, and there was no doubt that the bomb could
destroy this ship and do a great deal of damage to Base 478
itself.
    Futurity didn’t know where the bomb had come from, though after
millennia of war 478 was famously riddled with weapons caches. And he
had no idea how the bomb had been smuggled on board the Ask Politely,
this starship. But the Hierocrat had made it clear that Futurity
didn’t need to know any of that; all Futurity had to do was to
resolve this messy situation.
    ’But she can’t go home,’ he said again feebly. ’Her home doesn’t
exist any more, legally speaking. And soon enough it won’t exist
physically either. She’s a refugee.’ Futurity didn’t understand
anything about this situation. ’We’re trying to help her here.
Doesn’t she see that?’
    ’Evidently not,’ Tahget said dryly. Tahget didn’t move a muscle,
but Futurity could sense his growing impatience. ’Acolyte, none of
the politics of the Galaxy, or the geography of the black hole,
matter a jot to me.’ He stabbed a finger at the fish-tank. ’All I
care about is getting that woman away from that bomb. We can’t disarm
the thing. We can’t force our way into the cabin without - ’
    ’Without killing the woman?’
    ’Oh, I don’t care about that. No, we can’t get in without setting
the thing off. Do you need to know the technical details, of Virtual
trip-wires, of dead man’s switches? Suffice it to say that force is
not an option. And so I turn to you, acolyte. 478 is your church’s
world, after all.’
    Futurity spread his hands, ’What can I do?’
    Tahget laughed, uncaring. ’What you priests do best. Talk.’
    The dread weight of responsibility, which had oppressed Futurity
since he had been ’volunteered’ for this assignment by the Hierocrat
and projected into orbit, now pressed down on him hard. But, he
found, his greatest fear was not for his own safety, nor even for the
fate of this poor woman, but simply that he was making a fool of
himself in front of this dour captain. Shame on you, Futurity’s
Dream!
    He forced himself to focus. ’How do I speak to her?’
    The Captain