condition.’
Zoku trueforms move between the guns like medusae. There is an occasional flash and a report as a weapon is tested. The shots echo hollowly in the vast space.
‘Ha!’ Barbicane says, when he sees me flinch. ‘Don’t worry! Safety first! But guns need to be used! Not like collecting comic books, to be kept inside plastic foil! All hooked up to our gunscape, to be used by all our zoku, everywhere!’
I smile and count seconds in my head. I need to keep Barbicane and Chekhova occupied until Matjek finishes his part of the job. What is taking him so long? Unfortunately, I don’t dare to leave the Circle to check.
‘This is all very impressive,’ I say. ‘Antiques are nice. But I thought your zoku’s own creations were a bit more … ambitious. Tell, me, what is the biggest gun you have? That is something I’d like to see. I hear the Sobornost have solar lasers, and I always wondered if you could match them.’
Chekhova doesn’t even bother acknowledging my question. But Barbicane winks at me.
‘Oh, the biggest would not fit in here,’ he says. ‘We make the mass drivers for Supra City’s dynamic support members, for example. But I can show you the most interesting !’ He nudges Chekhova. ‘No need for false modesty here, my dear. Show him!’
She sighs and directs the q-dot bubble downwards with a gesture.
The next chamber is big.
It contains several holeships – gigantic wingless dragonflies, dull grey spheres with linear accelerator tails, several kilometres long. The insides of the spheres are perfect reflectors: they are used to store black holes, keeping them stable with their own Hawking radiation – until it’s time to fire them.
But it is the thing in the centre of the chamber that gives me pause. It looks vaguely like the head of a vast insect. There are two compound eyes, bulbous, globular arrays of transparent hexagons, joined at the waist. At the point where they meet, something rotates slowly, multiple silver spheres joined with spokes, like the model of a molecule – except that as it revolves, parts of it disappear and reappear in a disorienting fashion.
‘What is that ?’
‘My ekpyrotic gun,’ Chekhova says wearily.
‘It does not look that big.’
‘This is just the main aperture. You need to drop it into a gas-giant-sized mass to fire it. After the Spike, those are in short supply.’
‘And what does it do?’
‘It generates a gravitational disturbance that makes our spacetime emit a brane into the higher dimensions of the bulk. It bounces off the Planck brane and collides with ours again. It creates a miniature Big Bang.’
Suddenly, it is easier to see things from the Great Game Zoku’s point of view.
‘Sounds like it would be quite difficult to aim.’
I check my internal clock. What is Matjek doing ? My instructions were very precise. He should be in the Leblanc already. My original plan was to seal the deal and use the Bomba’s neutrino signal to qupt myself into the body I have hidden in the Wang bullet – just a loose collection of smart dust, almost undetectable – merely intended to get me aboard my ship, stored somewhere in the Arsenal. Once there, there is little that could stop us from getting out.
But perhaps the boy has gotten distracted.
‘Elder, is this really necessary?’ Chekhova says. ‘I have better things to do than to act as a tour guide—’
I start considering options to break the Circle for a second, but with the internal security systems of the Arsenal, I don’t dare risk it. To get here, we had to pass through a Realmgate that took us apart, scanned us at the atomic level for anything potentially dangerous. Of course, they would not do that to valuable antique items, risk damaging their precious quantum information contents: and that’s precisely what my plan relied upon.
I interrupt her. ‘It’s interesting to see so many ships here. I thought you were called the Gun Club?’
‘It’s not so different! Like
Zoku trueforms move between the guns like medusae. There is an occasional flash and a report as a weapon is tested. The shots echo hollowly in the vast space.
‘Ha!’ Barbicane says, when he sees me flinch. ‘Don’t worry! Safety first! But guns need to be used! Not like collecting comic books, to be kept inside plastic foil! All hooked up to our gunscape, to be used by all our zoku, everywhere!’
I smile and count seconds in my head. I need to keep Barbicane and Chekhova occupied until Matjek finishes his part of the job. What is taking him so long? Unfortunately, I don’t dare to leave the Circle to check.
‘This is all very impressive,’ I say. ‘Antiques are nice. But I thought your zoku’s own creations were a bit more … ambitious. Tell, me, what is the biggest gun you have? That is something I’d like to see. I hear the Sobornost have solar lasers, and I always wondered if you could match them.’
Chekhova doesn’t even bother acknowledging my question. But Barbicane winks at me.
‘Oh, the biggest would not fit in here,’ he says. ‘We make the mass drivers for Supra City’s dynamic support members, for example. But I can show you the most interesting !’ He nudges Chekhova. ‘No need for false modesty here, my dear. Show him!’
She sighs and directs the q-dot bubble downwards with a gesture.
The next chamber is big.
It contains several holeships – gigantic wingless dragonflies, dull grey spheres with linear accelerator tails, several kilometres long. The insides of the spheres are perfect reflectors: they are used to store black holes, keeping them stable with their own Hawking radiation – until it’s time to fire them.
But it is the thing in the centre of the chamber that gives me pause. It looks vaguely like the head of a vast insect. There are two compound eyes, bulbous, globular arrays of transparent hexagons, joined at the waist. At the point where they meet, something rotates slowly, multiple silver spheres joined with spokes, like the model of a molecule – except that as it revolves, parts of it disappear and reappear in a disorienting fashion.
‘What is that ?’
‘My ekpyrotic gun,’ Chekhova says wearily.
‘It does not look that big.’
‘This is just the main aperture. You need to drop it into a gas-giant-sized mass to fire it. After the Spike, those are in short supply.’
‘And what does it do?’
‘It generates a gravitational disturbance that makes our spacetime emit a brane into the higher dimensions of the bulk. It bounces off the Planck brane and collides with ours again. It creates a miniature Big Bang.’
Suddenly, it is easier to see things from the Great Game Zoku’s point of view.
‘Sounds like it would be quite difficult to aim.’
I check my internal clock. What is Matjek doing ? My instructions were very precise. He should be in the Leblanc already. My original plan was to seal the deal and use the Bomba’s neutrino signal to qupt myself into the body I have hidden in the Wang bullet – just a loose collection of smart dust, almost undetectable – merely intended to get me aboard my ship, stored somewhere in the Arsenal. Once there, there is little that could stop us from getting out.
But perhaps the boy has gotten distracted.
‘Elder, is this really necessary?’ Chekhova says. ‘I have better things to do than to act as a tour guide—’
I start considering options to break the Circle for a second, but with the internal security systems of the Arsenal, I don’t dare risk it. To get here, we had to pass through a Realmgate that took us apart, scanned us at the atomic level for anything potentially dangerous. Of course, they would not do that to valuable antique items, risk damaging their precious quantum information contents: and that’s precisely what my plan relied upon.
I interrupt her. ‘It’s interesting to see so many ships here. I thought you were called the Gun Club?’
‘It’s not so different! Like
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