SHAREEN FITZKELLUM
Fireheart Station was an exciting chance for the two of them to learn under the genius Kotto Okiah, but in ten days Shareen and Howard had done nothing more than busywork. And Shareen was ready for big things.
“I can’t figure out these notes enough to decide if they’re brilliant or just a confused mess.” Her brow furrowed as she bent over the half-finished designs and wandering equations.
“Kotto never intended for anyone else to have to decipher them,” Howard said in a calm voice to steady her, as he always did.
Uncertain, Shareen went back to recopying and organizing the scientist’s handwritten notes for countless half-finished projects and dead ends, crackpot ideas, and musings about physically impossible inventions. “I’m sure he had something clear in mind.”
Kotto had asked Howard and Shareen to do this, since he didn’t have time. “And,” he had added with a twinkle in his eye, “it’ll give you insight into how my mind works.”
So far, Shareen’s primary insight was that Kotto had a disorganized mind. But she supposed that was how the quality of genius would appear to an outsider. She knew she was clever enough to figure it out, though.
Inside the chamber cluttered with gadgets, measuring equipment, testing apparatus, and marking boards, KR and GU puttered around the laboratory space. GU said, “Your contributions are far superior to what a compy can provide. Even Technical models like myself and KR could not organize and interpret Kotto’s concepts.”
KR added, “We have offered to help him in any way possible, but he does not let us touch his notes.”
Shareen drew satisfaction from that as she picked up the scrambled papers. She reminded herself that Kotto had been responsible for so many incredible breakthroughs, surely something just as important might be hidden here under all the mathematical debris and false starts. She just had to find it. “I can’t even tell where one idea ends and another starts. I could be collating two entirely different designs.”
Howard smiled at her. “That could lead to a wondrous hybrid invention.”
“Right, like an advanced cooling system that also makes music.” She shook her head and got back to work.
From looking at his hodgepodge of “ideas in development,” she decided that Kotto Okiah’s attention was like a bullet ricocheting through a maze. Most of his “designs” were simple musings without underlying calculations, as if he jotted down any amusing thought that came to mind but never bothered to go through the vigorous mathematics and proofs to back it up. In fact, Howard had said the same thing about her. Shareen smiled to think she might have something in common with Kotto.…
As a Roamer, she had had an insatiable curiosity since she was a child. She had taken apart mechanical objects long before she had any inkling of how to put them back together (causing much consternation when she meddled with sophisticated ekti-harvesting systems in her family’s skymine).
When she’d gone to Earth to study in a prestigious academy, she hadn’t done well in the environment. She argued with her professors, insisting that if she intuitively understood the mechanics, then the math was a waste of time that she could use more effectively for inventing other things. Meeting Howard at the academy had been the one bright spot of the experience—and he taught her the importance of rigorous double-checking and follow-through.
Apparently, no one had taught Kotto that, though. Well, then it was up to her and Howard.
Sifting through the notes, she did find some of the concepts quite fascinating; she just wished she could interpret how Kotto envisioned bringing them to fruition. In years past, he had developed vital defenses against the hydrogues during the Elemental War; he had improved ekti-skymining operations; he had designed and established seemingly impossible Roamer settlements in the most inhospitable of places, from lava worlds to frozen planetoids.
When Shareen reminded herself of all those things, she found more patience for his disorganization. It was an honor to work with such a legend, even if Kotto didn’t seem to know what to do with the two of them.
Howard came over to join her. “We always do our best work together. Let me help organize and interpret, since we both want to make sense out of what Kotto was working on.”
“I’m not sure even he knows,” she mumbled, but it was not a complaint. “Between the two of us, maybe we can finish some of these things.”
Kotto’s lab space was a dumping ground of half-completed prototypes, from plasma rainbow dispensers to an oscillating sonic projector that could cast strange sounds across a room like a mechanical ventriloquist—to what purpose, Shareen didn’t know. He had built a surveillance system equipped with a self-looping anti-grav field so the imager could float independently, but it wobbled so much that any reconnaissance was useless.
At first glance, these uncompleted projects did not seem up to the caliber of Kotto’s previous breakthroughs. And his concept sketches for even bigger inventions seemed entirely impractical. She switched on the plasma rainbow dispenser, then turned it off, dazzled by the flood of colors. “A lot of these seem like … toys.”
Howard cautioned, “I would not presume to judge the merits of Kotto Okiah’s concepts. It’s altogether probable he’s so far ahead of us in his thinking that we don’t grasp their potential.”
Shareen just wished the scientist would spend more time mentoring them so she could learn—and ask a lot more questions. Instead, Kotto’s attention was focused on the Big Ring construction project. She looked up from incomplete or recursive calculations scrawled on a scrap of paper. Outside the lab module, she could see the gigantic torus being assembled in the sea of nebula gas, and its enormity impressed her. Thousands of large superconducting magnets would form a huge loop, powered internally by charged power blocks.
Now that would be something to be a part of.
Kotto had been working on the Big Ring with unlimited funding and unwavering Roamer support for six years. His mathematics were beyond the comprehension of most clan members, but when he said the test was necessary, that it might open up a new galactic landscape for instantaneous wormhole travel far superior to the limited Klikiss transportal network, the Roamers gave him the benefit of the doubt. After all, when had he ever asked them for anything before?
The last segments of the torus were just now being framed out with linked girders, and all available power blocks were commandeered for the project. Fireheart Station had just sent out a call for new workers, qualified engineers and experienced space construction crews. With Kotto Okiah’s name attached, there would be plenty of applicants.
When it was completed in another month, the Big Ring would be the largest pure-physics experiment humans had ever conducted—and who knew what they would discover about the structure of space-time? The power the ring generated would be inconceivable. Shareen couldn’t wait to see it in action.
Howard caught her staring out the windowport. “We both want to take part in that, but we have to impress Kotto first. Maybe then he’ll let us assist him.”
With greater determination, Shareen looked back down at the notes spread on the lab table and suddenly realized that two completely separate scribblings were continuations of yet another project, and when she sorted them together, the concept made more sense. “There’s the Guiding Star I’ve been looking for! Looks like Kotto has a plan for sequencing the energy-collector films for power blocks so they can be charged logarithmically instead of linearly.”
Excited now, Shareen used a stylus to cross out several sections that Kotto had painstakingly derived, then left unfinished. “That’s a dead end—here’s where he went off track.” She tapped a row of calculations, corrected them, then furiously wrote a new sequence of integrals. “This is the way to do it.”
Howard bent closer. “Yes, but don’t forget this step.” He pointed with his finger. “Logarithmic charging of energy films? That’s a significant breakthrough. It could increase Fireheart’s production of power blocks by an order of magnitude.”
“Then it’s a good thing we figured it out.” Shareen felt a warm pride, wondering if this was some kind of test that Kotto had left for them. He would certainly be proud of what they had done. She glanced again at the Big Ring, then back down at the notes. “We might even have time to finish one of these other inventions.”
Howard accepted the challenge.