Martin smiled. “Mr. Palto here was explaining how the printer works.” He indicated the jumpsuit-making machine still buzzing along. “That’s what he calls it, a printer. I was asking if it could make things besides those jumpsuits.”
“You looking to buy someone a dress?”
Martin looked embarrassed. “Well, that bunch really seemed to have fun playing stickball yesterday, so I figured there’s ways we can help around here that aren’t just work. Mr. Palto says if we can make up for the calories, they can probably print up some baseball gloves.”
Broben was incredulous. “You want to make ball gloves?”
“They don’t seem to require much material,” said Palto. “We don’t have anything like bovine leather, of course, but we have excellent synthetics. Nylon polymers, lightweight carbon filament. We do need an example to scan so that we can make a fabrication template.”
“How’s that again?” said Broben.
“They need a glove for a model,” said Martin.
“Oh. Well, that’s a shame. It was a great idea, chief.”
Martin darkened. He reached back and pulled something from his waistband and held it out, not looking at Broben.
Broben stared at it in wonder. “You brought your glove?” he asked.
Martin looked at the floor and shrugged. “The captain said bring what we needed.”
Broben laughed all the way back to the dorm.
EIGHTEEN
Shorty and Boney watched the technician, whose name was Berne, pull a clear wad from a jumpsuit pocket and set it on the table. He smoothed it out and it went rigid. He tapped it and it glowed white.
“You don’t have an extra one of those laying around, do you?” Shorty asked.
Berne scowled and put a finger to his lips. “Start hash folder request,” he told the device.
“Folder name?” the rectangle asked.
“Solar array sub schematics.”
A grid of labeled icons appeared on the sheet. Berne began scrolling through it by flicking his finger. He tapped an icon and another row of icons opened up beneath it.
“Shoot,” said Shorty, “I was hoping it’d be a picture phone again.”
“I was only talking to the Library,” Berne said. “There’s no avatar.”
Shorty looked at Boney, who shrugged. “I guess they didn’t want to be seen,” Shorty said.
“There is no they,” Berne said testily. “The Library’s an AI. Central data core.”
“Can you pick up a good swing program?”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Shorty put his hands on top of his head. “Man oh man. We made it to you people just in time.”
“Maybe we could focus a little,” Berne suggested.
“How do they get parts in that thing?” Shorty persisted. “It’s thinner than paper.”
“And you can see through it,” Boney pointed out.
Berne glanced up at them and sighed. “It’s a holofilament weave embedded in memory polymer,” he said wearily. “Happy now?”
“It remembers for you?”
“The polymer doesn’t remember anything except that it’s a polymer. The filament does the processing. You can’t see it because it’s too thin. Right now it’s just a dumb terminal. The data core does the processing and the com panel displays the result. That’s what I’m doing now.” He scowled. “What I’m trying to do,” he amended.
“Jeez, get all touchy,” said Shorty. “I just like knowing how things work.”
“Why don’t I just tell you that it’s magic, so we can get on with what you came here for.”
Shorty looked at Boney. “He don’t like us vewwy much, do he?” he said in Bugs Bunny’s voice.
“He doesn’t know us,” said Boney.
“I don’t know you,” Berne agreed. “I’m sure you’re model citizens, and you’re very good at—at whatever it is you do.”
Shorty saluted. “Radio Operator First Class, mac, and don’t you forget it.” He hooked a thumb at Boney. “Sergeant Mullen there’s the best bombardier in the Army. He’s dropped down more chimneys than St. Nick.”
“Once again I have no idea what any of that means.”
“It’s magic,” said Boney.
Berne laughed despite himself and tapped another icon. “Fair enough,” he said. “But I’m good at what I do, too. And so are about twenty other people who’ve worked on the eleven o’clock panel. We didn’t just sit here in the dark for an hour a day for the last eight years, you know. We’ve tested circuits and debugged environment code and spectrographed gases in the induction coils. I’ve crawled around on the dome more than once. We’ve tried everything we could think of, and we can’t find anything wrong.”
“You have to try things you didn’t think of,” said Boney.
“I’m so eager to hear your outside perspective.”
“We just want to help, if we can.”
Berne folded his arms. “You know,” he said, “after we exhausted all the obvious and logical solutions, we started holding weekly group sessions to come up with the most ridiculous fixes we could think of. Lightning rods and noble gases. We still conference if someone gets some new idea.”
“Sounds like you’ve covered all your bases,” said Boney.
Berne looked at him and spread his hands helplessly. “Whatever that means,” he said.
“And he thinks we got nothing to teach him,” said Shorty.
Berne looked sour. “I don’t think it’s very likely that two—let’s call you well-intended strangers—who think my com panel is the voice of God, are going to figure out what’s wrong with a two-hundred-year-old inductive laminate geothermal helio cell.”
“We might,” said Boney.
“You don’t even know what it is. Much less how it works.”
“You give it juice, it turns the juice into light,” said Shorty. “Somewhere something wore out or came loose. You find out where and you fix it or replace it. Sha-zam, everybody’s back to working on their tan before lunch.”
“God,” said Berne.
Shorty grinned. “Maybe we’ll strike oil,” he said. “Besides, what else you got to do?”
“Would you like a list?” Berne shot back. But he showed them wiring diagrams and circuit schematics. He tried to explain the diagnostic software and the routines that regulated sequencing and illumination. He gave up when he realized they didn’t even understand what software was. They thought the holofilament schematics were a wiring diagram. These people were savages. Analog savages.
Berne shook both hands at the dense tangle depicted on his com panel. “These aren’t wires the way you’re thinking of them,” he explained. “They’re microminiaturized optical filaments that transmit photon signals in a holographic medium.”
Shorty reached over Berne’s shoulder and tapped a line on a diagram. It glowed green, highlighting a correct route through the incomprehensible maze. “This sends a signal from here to here, right?” Shorty asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Then it’s a wiring diagram. Who cares if there’s really wires?”
“You … have a point.”
Boney asked about physical connections. Berne explained that a layer of crawlspace ran between the hexagonal sky panels and the dome that housed the city.
Boney frowned. “They built two domes?” he asked. “One inside the other?”
“They didn’t build the Dome, they found it,” said Berne. “It’s a lava dome, a huge air bubble that was left after the lava cooled. They’re everywhere. It’s one reason it’s been hard for the Redoubt to locate us.”