[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but I’m currently also rewriting Fall, so there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next chapter is planned for the week of March 7th.]

Previous: Chapter 34

Doc looked up from the display in his workshop and met Yiskah’s eyes.

“I don’t regard ‘lucky’ as a very useful word here. I think DASI’s low prior likelihood numbers are suggestive of successful probability manipulation.” He spread his hands. "You can never be sure. That’s just one of the things that makes research under these conditions so dangerous and frustrating. But I’d say the experimental results were relatively favorable.“

"Favorable?” said Yiskah.

“Neither of them died, they generated some exceptional data, the portal closed cleanly, they didn’t wreck anything irreplaceable, and it even looks like they’ll both recover fairly quickly. Considering what could have happened? That’s favorable. Or lucky, if you insist.”

“I wouldn’t call what happened to Flicker either favorable or lucky. And you aren’t as callous about it as you sound.”

Doc snorted. "No. But consider. We aren’t starting from 'everything is okay’, and this isn’t academic research. It’s critical path tool development to combat an existential threat. Something I have just a bit of experience with. But Golden Valkyrie didn’t ask me to help, and the most plausible reason is that my approach would be too cautious. So I’ll advise, but not try to direct. And Flicker has had worse. She told DASI she’d be fine before she went to clear the internal radioactivity.“

Yiskah raised an eyebrow. "I don’t regard 'fine’ as a very useful word here. Lif is taking care of Journeyman. And Osk says Flicker seems to have stabilized, physically, though she’ll have to regrow the hand almost from scratch. But I’m concerned about her mental state.”

“Flicker is pretty hard-nosed about experimental results. 'We got good data and nobody died’ counts as success. And they got plenty of–”

“Flicker is hard-nosed as long as she’s the only one who gets hurt.”

“Well, yes.”

“And she’s alone in the dark at that pool by the Tree in the Nine Worlds–the same place she went after the fleet battle. She can’t call on DASI for support, and she can’t use many of her coping techniques because she has to stay at normal speed to work on her hand. Her command to Lif was rather worrying, and she flat out ordered Osk to leave her alone. She’ll usually listen to Osk about healing, but not this time.”

Yiskah was already dressed for field work, knives at her belt, and she propped her pack against a workbench as she continued. “Osk is willing to disobey orders, if necessary. She came and got me. I can get to Flicker safely, and she can’t order me away. But.”

“What do you need?” asked Doc.

Yiskah half-smiled. "Physics is personal to her even when everything really is fine. If I can get her to talk at all, she’ll want to thrash out the details of the accident. I’m not a specialist, I won’t have DASI’s assistance, and I can’t read Flicker’s mind anymore because of the Skystone. I need to understand enough to pull her out of a self-blame loop if needed.“

"All right.” Doc leaned back in his chair. "If she is blaming herself, tell her that there are plenty of measures we can take now–Learning had a particularly useful suggestion–but this particular problem was not something that could reasonably have been predicted. I wouldn’t have caught it, nor would DASI. We didn’t know enough–and were unlikely to find out unless something dramatic happened. If we’d been more cautious, we’d have probably just had something similar happen tomorrow or next week instead of today.“

"What did happen?”

“Well, Journeyman did a good job of boundary smoothing, but we knew conditions on the far side of that portal were going to be different–that was the point. It was interesting that he managed to connect to a space something like what he wanted on his first real try. And that ordinary matter could survive there at all.”

Yiskah frowned. "None of the probes did.“

"Didn’t expect them to. Journeyman didn’t even attempt to make the first boundary respect chemical bonds. But they had the probes, and we needed to find out what happened when we sent matter through, so they tried a few. What surprised me was that Flicker got the tip of her finger back. I figured she’d lose some skin, and we’d be studying strange radiation for a week to figure out what Journeyman needed to adjust.”

Doc pinched the bridge of his nose and stared at his screen for a moment. "Do you know what a muon is?“

"I know it’s a subatomic particle. Flicker has mentioned them a few times. I learned most of the particle physics I do know either from or because of her. I was always more interested in chemistry.”

“A muon is a more massive version of the electron. It can take an electron’s place around an atom, which has some interesting effects. They’re not uncommon; they get produced by cosmic rays all the time. They’re also unstable–their half-life is about two microseconds. Under normal conditions. Neither the far side of the portal nor the inside of Flicker’s hand when she’s using her tricks qualify as 'normal conditions’.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sure there were a few inside Flicker’s finger each time she pulled it back, and they have a characteristic decay signature, but that was masked by something I should have thought of. She’s wearing the Skystone now. It helps protect her from incoming radiation, but it affects radiation trying to get out, too. Enough that the muon signal got swamped by the charge equalization.”

“So there were muons, and that was bad? Where were they coming from?” asked Yiskah. Doc’s explanations sometimes took a while to get to the point–but Flicker was the same way, so she’d probably follow a similar path.

“Some things were more stable on the far side, some were less. Flicker had to pump in energy to stabilize something in her hand. We don’t know what yet, and it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that some of the energy ended up as muons, and they started to build up. Which would have been just a nuisance, except for something else that was stable on the far side–the diproton.”

“And why was that bad?”

“Because muons can catalyze fusion, and a stable diproton makes proton-proton fusion about ten billion times faster.”

*****

“…and when I pulled my hand back it was full of muons,” said Flicker. "They’d been turning my water molecules into diprotons plus oxygen atoms that were only still hanging together because I wasn’t letting things move. And the diprotons started decaying into deuterium. Some already had.“

Flicker was neck deep in the pool, and Yiskah sat cross-legged at the edge, next to her. It wasn’t quite pitch dark, because of the underwater blue glow coming from Flicker’s left hand–Cherenkov radiation, emitted as she slowly eliminated the remaining radioactivity. She’d said she didn’t want to talk. Then started talking anyway.

She spoke with frequent pauses as she stared off into the darkness. She sounded like she was in shock, and Yiskah was already fairly sure that wasn’t because of her own injury.

"So you had a fusion chain reaction go off in your hand?” Yiskah asked. Flicker had already apologized for trailing off without realizing it once.

“Sort of. It was mainly catalysis, and most of the actual fusion had already happened slowly on the far side. It just hadn’t released much energy yet, and wanted to do it all at once when I pulled my hand back. There were some new reactions once things got hot enough. But I couldn’t get rid of the energy safely until we got back to Earth, because our heat sink wasn’t close to enough, and radiating would have killed Journeyman.

"And I thought… I thought I’d done a good enough job, but after I’d dumped enough of the main load of heat to slow down a little, I started getting a worse and worse feeling from the Skystone. Journeyman was dying. And I couldn’t help, because my hand was still too radioactive to slow down close to him.”

“DASI said the high speed passes to remove his outer clothing helped with the thermal shock.” Yiskah tried a bit of humor. "You know you’re having a rough day when being suddenly naked in an Antarctic blizzard is an improvement.“

Flicker went on, not seeming to notice. "His rad suit melted, and his coat was on fire. And his hat… His hat looked like it had been burned to a crisp. I don’t even… I don’t know how he lived.”

“Lif got to him in time. And I can tell you what happened to his hat–it released all its stored magical potential protecting his head.”

“How do you know that?” asked Flicker.

“Lif and I were both in the room when Mad Hatter taught him that trick–and it worked. No brain damage. And Lif is healing the rest.”

“Oh. That’s… That’s good.”

Yiskah let the silence stretch for a while before speaking again. The blue glow seemed to be dimming. "Do you remember what you said to Lif?“

"Just to help Journeyman. I think. I was in a hurry and I’m a little… disconnected. Not really.”

“You ordered her to 'Give him all your best everything, no matter what happens to me.’ Then you uploaded your summary, which was full of typos–”

“I was typing one-handed, using one of my crap spare costumes, because I didn’t want to make another good one radioactive. Tell DASI I’m sorry.”

“It’s not a problem. But then you told DASI you’d be fine and came here. And ordered Osk away when she tried to help. Do you see why that worried her? And me?”

“Osk couldn’t help–I can heal myself and anyway I wasn’t going to be ready until I got rid of the rest of the radioactivity.” Flicker looked down. "I guess I’m pretty close now. But I’m tired and fuzzy and nearly killed my partner, and…“

"And?”

“And I’m seeing a pattern. You–Stella–taught me how to look for those in people.”

“Yes?”

“Three times I’ve tried to get physically close to someone. You know what happened the first time. I thought I’d learned better–before I broke Donner’s arm. And it just took every bit of power he had, and Lif besides, to stop me from killing Journeyman. Once is bad luck. Twice could be coincidence. Three times is pretty strong evidence that the problem is me.”

“That’s not–”

“Donner said once that I didn’t have to worry about being human. Just human compatible. But I don’t think I’m human compatible. Mike has done so much to help me, and all I’ve ever done is hurt him.”

“Flicker. Listen. You are not fine, and now isn’t– Hang on.”

Yiskah stood and drew her knives, suddenly furious. She turned on her force fields, illuminating everything nearby with a green glow.

“Flicker, could you do me a big personal favor and stay right where you are while I take care of a small problem?”

“Um. Okay…”

Yiskah raised her voice. "You’re good at hiding, whoever you are, and good at masking your mind. But I know you’re there now, and you were eavesdropping on a very private conversation. So either come out and we can discuss things like reasonable people or I will track you down.“

There was a thick tree root protruding from the ground next to the water. One moment, that was all. The next, a woman sat upon it, arms crossed. She wore a dark dress and looked strange in the light from Yiskah’s knives, with light, fluffy hair and dark eyes.

"You wouldn’t have far to go,” she said. "And since when are we both reasonable people?“

"I can pretend. Can you?”

“We’ll see. Think you can take me? You can’t. Not here.”

“Interesting,” said Yiskah. "You believe that, and you know who I am.“

"Word gets around. Now tell me. Someone starts talking under your window, and you overhear, whose fault is that?”

“I don’t see any windows.”

“No. But I do live here, and that’s why I heard you. I don’t come out very often–I don’t care for people much. I’m fine with Skybreaker using the pool. She helped refill it. Girl can dance. But you–you’re presuming.”

“I presumed I was having a private talk with–”

“Yiskah, wait,” said Flicker. "I think I know who this is.“

The woman snorted. "So he told you about me, did he? I bet I know a few things he left out.”

“You… know about us?”

“Girl, you were sitting on one of my roots when you kissed him.”

“Who are you,” asked Yiskah.

The woman smiled faintly in the green light. "My name is Sylvi. I speak for the Tree.“



Next: Chapter 36

