The space suits were really just human-shaped balloons, and while their interior surfaces had been programmed to absorb carbon dioxide, Conrad and Bascal had never figured out how to crack it back into oxygen again. So they would have something like fifteen minutes to get into the barge before they suffocated to death. Like everything on this trip, it was a gamble.
“The sleeping beauties may not agree to this,” Conrad replied. “We should give them the option of remaining in storage. For safekeeping.”
“Well,” Xmary pointed out, “to ask them that, we’re still going to have to wake them up.”
“True.” Conrad approached the fax machine, and queried it: “Do you have sufficient buffer mass to recreate the people in storage?”
“Yes,” the fax replied, in that weird, stupid voice it had.
“Good. Good.” With a glance at Bascal, he continued. “Would you please print a copy of Raoul Sanchez? Minus the lung injuries? We might as well get started.”
“My data buffer does not contain a pattern called Raoul Sanchez,” the fax replied. And that couldn’t be right, because poor Raoul’s name and personal data should be appended to his genome, right there in every cell of his body.
“The first person you ... absorbed. Stored, whatever.”
“First?” the fax said. “I have no record indexed in that manner. I have stored eleven thousand four hundred and twenty-two persons.”
Conrad rolled his eyes. “Not the first one ever. The first one on this voyage.”
“Voyage? I have no records indexed in that manner.”
“It was about five weeks ago.”
“My buffer contains four personnel records from that period. None of them is named Raoul Sanchez.”
Four records? Conrad felt a sudden chill. “What... records are they? What names?”
“James Grover Shadat,” the fax replied. “Bertram Wang. Khen Nolastname. Emilio Braithwaite Roberts.”
“That’s all?”
“I have two other personnel records available.”
“Preston Midrand and Jamil Gazzaniga?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, shit,” Bascal said. “It’s a FIFO buffer.”
Conrad turned. “A what?”
“First In/First Out,” Bascal replied angrily. “Its memory isn’t infinite—it’s just supposed to store the pattern long enough to forward it to the Nescog, along with a destination address. As new data gets added, the oldest patterns are deleted to make space. God damn it, I knew that. I wasn’t ... thinking. Frankly, I’m surprised it can hold even six people. That’s a lot of data.”
“So Raoul is dead?” Karl wanted to know.
“This Raoul is, yeah,” Bascal snapped. “Completely. Irretrievably. Even a dead body can be scanned for memories. Hell, a skeleton can be scanned for residual fields if you’ve got the time and money, and even the place where someone stood can be mined for ghosts. But there’s no stone or metal here to support a haunting. I think Raoul’s pattern is about as gone as a pattern can get.”
At these words Conrad felt a sick, sinking feeling. They had finally managed to get someone killed. The risk had been there all along, but now it was a fact. Bascal’s fact, mostly, but the rest of them—Conrad included— had helped make it happen.
“We killed him,” he said. “Oh, God. It’s over. We’ve got to send a distress signal now.”
“On the contrary,” Bascal replied coolly. “This changes nothing.”
But Conrad was having none of that. “Bas, if we climb in the fax, we’ll be killing the others, all six of them. Hell, shit, there are seven of us here right now.” He pointed, ticking the names off on his fingers. “You, me, Xmary, Karl, Martin, Ho, and Steve. That’s seven. One of us will die, too.”
“The civilized thing,” Bascal said, “would be to draw straws. Six long, one short.”
“No, Bas, the civilized thing would be to pull those boys out of there and call the navy for help.”
Bascal slapped a fist in his hand three times. “No, no, and no. That would be the pointless thing. How many times do we have to go over this? The bodies on this fetula are expendable. It’s our real lives that matter.”
“You can’t just kill them,” Xmary said, drifting nearer to the prince, looming weightlessly over him. “You haven’t even asked. I say we pull them out and vote.”
Karl raised a fist in agreement, and even Martin was nodding. But Bascal was undeterred. “This is a monarchy, people. My job is to attend to your best interests, whether you like it or not. I’ve trained for it, literally, since before I was born. That’s the whole point of monarchy: you people are not qualified to vote.”
“And you are?” Conrad said, crossing his arms.
“Shut up, bloodfuck,” Ho said menacingly.
“It’s all right,” the prince told him. “He needs to hear this. Yes, Conrad, I’m qualified to make your decisions. It’s my solemn duty. It’s what I’m trained for.”
But it was Conrad’s turn to press the point. “You’re a figurehead, Bascal. Less than that: you’re the child of figureheads. Your ‘solemn duty’ is to throw the first pitch at ball games and, you know, cut ribbons and stuff.”
Bascal laughed. “You can’t actually believe that, boyo. When was the last time a Royal Decree was disobeyed? When was the last no-confidence vote in the Senate? The people of Earth were tired of responsibility; they forced it on my parents, and wouldn’t take it back now even if they could.”
“Which they can’t?” Conrad demanded.
“Which they can’t,” Bascal agreed. “Look, if nothing else, I’m the third-richest human who ever lived. I could buy whole cities with my weekly allowance.”
“And that gives you the right to commit murder?”
The prince balled his fist again, then sighed and released it. “Call it what you like. Single murder—even premeditated—is a property crime in a Queendom of immorbids. You have some very puritan ideals, Conrad, but if I paid you enough, you’d gladly die a hundred times. A thousand . For that matter, I could buy your right arm. Chop it off and amend your genome, so the fax filters would know not to grow it back. Enough money and you’d be the one asking me.”
“I’m not for sale,” Conrad said, wondering suddenly if that was true. And fearing that it wasn’t.
“Is that what you’re offering?” Xmary asked, suddenly intrigued as well as angry. “Bribes for our cooperation?”
“No,” Bascal said. “Absolutely, no, you should never mix business and friendship. It’s bad for both. Buying people is one of the easiest ways to destroy them. I used to burn my tutors that way, ruin their lives, until my parents finally put a stop to it. And it wasn’t ... fun. Or good. I think they wanted me to have that lesson: money as a weapon, as a tool of despair. My father’s early work sent shockwaves through the entire economy. You wouldn’t believe how careful he is today.
“I know you think I’m callous, but I haven’t even opened my wallet. And I don’t need to. Never mind the force I can bring to bear; this voyage is a major historical event, like the Boston Tea Party or the Air Tax Rebellion, and when it’s all over, these boys will be proud they played a part.”
“You’re crazy,” Conrad said simply.
“Am I?”
“Either that, or you’re evil. Wake these boys up, if you’re so sure they’ll agree with you.”