When the Devil Dances

“The fourth and final item this individual has to report is acceptance to level two sohon training. Sohon is, as you should be aware, the Indowy field of technical metaphysics. You are, of course, trained for suit fitting which is a specialized form of level two sohon. However, as far as can be determined, this individual is the first human to be accepted for unlimited level two sohon. It is believed that a level of four or even five sohon may eventually be attained. It is to be hoped that positive acclaim may be accrued to the Clan of O’Neal by this and future accomplishments.

“Those are the four items of interest for this week. Looking forward to your reply, Michelle O’Neal.”

Mike reran that part of the tape twice shaking his head. He knew, generally, what she was talking about, but the specifics were sort of eluding him. One of the problems with GalTech was that everything had to be produced by Indowy technicians on an individual, custom, basis. Humans, even humans like O’Neal who had had some training in the technique, generally referred to it as “praying,” but that wasn’t really what was happening. Because the Indowy had been working with atomic level micro-manufacturing for, literally, thousands of years, their method of manufacture involved using swarms of nannites to build products atom by atom in vats. This gave them the capacity to build materials that violated many “known facts” of materials science; the nannites could make atoms do things that occurred only as low probabilities in any other method.

However, the process defied control by even the most advanced computers. The nannites were best controlled through a sort of direct neural interface. An individual Indowy, or, more commonly, groups, would take seats by the tank and… manipulate the nannites. It was not a direct thought process; it involved giving the nannites general directions and then… letting them use the individual’s brain as a remote processor. For a suit fitting, it mostly involved staying very still and sort of meditating while concentrating on the suit “adjusting” to the person it was being shaped on; the nannites and the suit personality handled the rest.

However, as he understood it, the problem with most forms of class two and higher was that the person or team had to hold a perfect image of the item to be produced, down to an understanding of the molecular alignments for all of the individual components. A suit, for example, was a six-month process of construction involving one level six, a grand master of sohon, and dozens of lower level Indowy, all meditating in meta-concert on a perfect image, down to the last atom; that was why a suit cost almost as much as a frigate.

He had to admit that the concept of a human advancing to class two sohon, especially an eleven-year-old, even a prodigy like his daughter, was rather amazing.

He thought about how to compose a suitable reply. If he was too positive, too emotional, she might see that as a rebuke of her own distance. On the other hand, if he was too wooden, she might see it the same way. Finally he gave up and gushed.

Dear Michelle,

It’s really great to hear about your advancement. I have to say that your success is a very good reflection upon the family and that you should be very proud of it, as I am. I hope to someday be able to congratulate you in person and I look forward to the day that we can all be together again as a family.

Your loving father,

Dad

He always sent his replies as text, typing them into an old word processor program and letting the AID convert them to a suitable format and send them on the military network. A laser transmitter would add them to the queue and squirt them at a deep space satellite. From there they would be transferred to Titan Base, then sit in a Jovian communications buoy until a ship was headed out-system. Every ship carried the mail in and out of the system, dropping it at other buoys until eventually, in about six to ten weeks, faster than any but the fastest military courier, it reached Michelle’s planet, Daswan. Given that a transport ship would take over a year to make the journey, that wasn’t too shabby.