Starplex

All his life, he’d had trouble sleeping—despite the advice people had given him over the years. He never drank caffeinated beverages after 18:00. He had PHANTOM play white noise through the bedroom speakers, drowning out the sound of Rissa’s occasional snoring. And although there was a digital-clock display built into his night table, he’d covered its readout with a little square of plastic card slipped into a join between the pieces of wood composing the table. Staring at a clock, worrying about how late it was, about how little sleep he was going to get before morning came, was counterproductive. Oh, he could see the clock face when standing in the bedroom, and he could always reach over and bend down the plastic card to look at it in bed if he was really curious, but it helped.

Sometimes, that is.

But not tonight.

Tonight, he tossed and turned.

Tonight, he relived the encounter in the corridor with Jag.

Jag. Perfect name for the bastard.

Keith rolled onto his left side.

Jag was currently running a series of professional-development seminars for those Starplex staff members who wanted to know more physics; Rissa was running a similar series for those who wanted to learn some more biology.

Keith had always been fascinated by physics. Indeed, while taking a range of sciences in his first year at university, he’d thought seriously about becoming a physicist. So much neat stuff—like the anthropic principle, which said that the universe had to give rise to intelligent life. And Schredinger’s cat, a thought experiment that demonstrated that it was the act of observing that actually shaped reality. And all the wonderful twists and turns to Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity.

Keith loved Einstein—loved him for his fusion of humanity and intellect, for his wild hair, for his own knight-errant quest to try to put the nuclear genie he’d made possible back into the bottle. Even after choosing sociology as his major, Keith had still kept a poster of the grand old man of physics on his dorm wall. He would enjoy taking some physics seminars… but not with Jag. Life was too short for that.

He thought about what Rhombus had said about Waldahud family life—and that turned his mind to his older sister Rosalind and younger brother Brian.

In a way, Roz and Brian had shaped him as much as his genetic makeup had. Because they existed, he was a middle child. Middle children were the bridge-builders, always trying to make connections, to bring groups together. It had always fallen to Keith to organize family events, such as parties for their parents’ milestone anniversaries and birthdays, or Christmas gatherings of the clan. And he’d organized his high-school class’s twentieth reunion, thrown receptions in his home for colleagues visiting from out of town, supported multicultural and ecumenical groups. Hell, he had spent most of his professional life working to get the Commonwealth off the ground, the ultimate exercise in bridge-building.

Roz and Brian didn’t worry about who liked them and who didn’t, about whether there was peace between all parties, about networking, about whether people were getting along.

Roz and Brian probably slept well at nights.

Keith switched back to lying on his spine, an arm behind his head.

Maybe it was impossible. Maybe humans and Waldahudin could never get along. Maybe they were too different. Or too similar. Or…

Christ, thought Keith. Let it go. Let it go.

He reached over, bent down the piece of plastic card, and looked at the glowing, mocking red digits.

Damn.

* * *

Now that they had collected samples of the strange material, it fell to Jag and Rissa, as the two science-division heads, to come up with a research plan. Of course, the next step depended on the nature of the samples. If it turned out to be nothing special, then Starplex would continue its quest for whoever activated this shortcut—a life-sciences priority mission. But if the strange material was out of the ordinary, Jag would argue that Starplex should stay here to study it, and Rissa’s team should take one of Starplex’s two diplomatic vessels—either the Nelson Mandela or the Kof Dagrelo em-Stalsh—to continue the search.

The next morning Jag used the intercom to contact Rissa, who was up in her lab, saying he wanted to see her. That could mean only one thing: Jag was intending a preemptive strike to set mission priorities. She took a deep breath, preparing for a fight, and headed for the elevator.

* * *