Complete Stories by Rudy Rucker Page B

since Kreementz had given him the two hundred thousand tons figure. “I get ten-to-the-eleventh grams per cubic centimeter. That’s neutronium. Plain neutrons with just enough degenerate electrons and protons mixed in to keep it stable. I’m surprised it worked.”
    “Is neutronium valuable?” Kreementz wanted to know.
    Harry opened his mouth to answer. I stepped in front of him. I had a policy of never letting Harry answer any question relating to money.
    “Are you kidding?” I asked Kreementz with a mocking laugh. “Is sewage valuable? Do people like cancer? Are oil-spills good for fish? Is the Pope Jewish? You’ve got a big, dirty cleanup ahead of you, Kreementz. One false move and you’ll blow the plant sky high. I don’t envy you.” One hand was behind my back, making shooing gestures at Harry.
    Kreementz sighed heavily. “You wouldn’t have a drink handy, would you?”
    Rosie got him a Coke and a few ounces of lab alcohol. He took a long, thirsty pull. Deftly I set the hook. “We could organize the cleanup, but it’d be …”
    “No, Fletch,” Harry said. “It’s too dangerous. I don’t think we should risk it.” He was right on the beam.
    “I’ve been authorized to make you an offer,” Kreementz said, naming a reasonable sum. “It’s a lot to pay, and I still think we could win the lawsuit…but the management wants to get her started up again.”
    “Triple that and we’ll have it clean in two days.”
    “Double.”
    “Done.”
    * * * *
    Actually, the cleanup was a piece of cake. We opened up the side of the smokestack and brought in bulldozers. The stuff on top was something like high-grade iron ore. The lower layers had been under the null-ray longer. We had to truck most of it out a few cubic centimeters at a time. Our trucks could only carry a hundred tons. But we’d rented a fleet of them.
    Harry had poured a titaniplast floor into our basement. The stuff was a metallic compound based on the new quark chemistry. No one knew yet how strong it was…since no one had ever been able to break a piece of it after it hardened. We dumped the neutronium in the basement window. Harry was happy to have the stuff, said it had arrived just when he needed it. He took some waldoes down there and got to work. I was happy to get him and his soap bubbles out of my office.
    My job right then was to run some computer simulations for the nuclear energy people. How many would die if we buried the radioactive waste in a diamond mine. What would happen if you put it in the polar ice-cap. How much would it cost to rocket it into the sun. They’d been stockpiling the waste for forty years now. Every time it looked like they’d decided on a solution, someone came up with a new “but what if.” Fletcher & Co. had taken an NRC contract to improve the simulations and, by God, make a decision.
    Harry had promised to try to think of a brand-new solution, but I wasn’t counting on it. I just concentrated on debugging my programs. The extra money from Murden Chemical had helped, but if I couldn’t make the NRC happy enough to pay big bucks, then the leaser was going to repossess my central processing unit. I would have sooner given up my own medulla.
    A week went by. Rosie brought me my lunch as usual, milk and tuna-salad sandwich. I didn’t like to stop programming when I was hot. But instead of quietly leaving, Rosie stayed standing next to me. Today’s dress was hologrammed to make a fountain out of her. It was distracting.
    “Is there a problem, Rosie?”
    “It’s Doctor Gerber. He’s been acting strangely.”
    “When Harry stops acting strangely, I’ll worry. Meanwhile, could you get me some more milk?”
    I went on eating and punching keys for a while, but then I realized she was still standing at my elbow. “All right,” I said, finally looking up. “Tell me about it.”
    “I guess you know that Doctor Gerber and I are…are …”
    I hadn’t. The possibility had never occurred to me. Harry