The Goliath Stone Read online

  Toby was saved from having to think of an immediate reply by Mycroft’s loud laughter.

  He got it partly under control, then said, “I’ll go deliver payment for the next couple of installments. You explain. —Major, they are initiating an act of commerce. I’ll go out on a limb and say ‘yes’ —they have souls.”

  As Mycroft went through the air lock, Toby began telling the nanos of Foundry about the value of exchanging design features. It helped that Firebird had two couples aboard; he could give examples.

  XXXVII

  Love is that condition where someone else’s happiness is necessary to your own.

  —ROBERT ANSON HEINLEIN

  One of the humans came out of the cargo bay and threw something at the base of Foundry’s radio antenna. It stuck and spread. It consisted of more operators, which had clustered themselves into entities.

  Entities they didn’t know.

  The entities of Foundry and the new entities established a mode of communication, and began exchanging information at once. The new entities were different in structure, and had useful features that the Briareus crew hadn’t come up with. Most began making arrangements for the design of new and improved entities at once.

  One telescope-based cluster remained in place, watching the human who had made the delivery until he went back inside.

  She thought he seemed happy.

  Prudence is the belief that bad things have preventable causes.

  Paranoia is the belief that it’s all the same cause.

  Politics is the belief that you know what the cause is.

  Sometimes you do.

  —WILLIAM CONNORS

  CAST AND CREW

  Bigfeet:

  JUAN HENCKE—Director of a university astronomy department

  TED MENDEZ—Actual astronomer

  TOBY GLYER—Engineer, physician, and creator of life, but easy to get along with

  ABDALLAH CHAHINE—Very ill traveler of Egyptian birth. Also chief auditor, Aswan Dredge Project. Poor digestion.

  MAY WYNDHAM—Rocket scientist, test pilot, idealist

  GORDON WYNDHAM—Financier, engineer, idealist

  BERT CRASSEN—U.S. senator from Michigan, failed writer, chairman of Internet Regulatory Committee. Soylent.

  JANE BODINE—U.S. representative from Arkansas, recycling heiress, three times widowed. Soylent.

  FRANCES HILL—Agent provocateuse. Former prostitute.

  RORY DENNETT—News performer, CNN

  WADE CURTIS—Author, engineer, historian, commentator, veteran, genius

  CHARLES OPIE—Marshall, United States Department of Homeland Security (U.S. DHS)

  WILLIAM CONNORS—Crazy son of a bitch

  LORELEI HUNTZ—Customs inspector, Ecuador. Agent provocateuse. Former male prostitute.

  CRISTINA GOMEZ—Chauffeur, bodyguard, guide. Former prostitute.

  MYCROFT YELLOWHORSE—Director-at-large, JNAIT Council of Chiefs. World’s Foremost Authority.

  KEITH DANTON—Data analyst, U.S. DHS

  ALICE JOHNSON—Encyclopedic analyst, U.S. DHS. Unexploded bomb.

  CLARENCE FEET—Weightlifter, JNAIT

  SAMANTHA BERLIOZ TORRES—Network hacker. Idealist.

  ARTHUR FAHY—News performer, AOL-CBS

  STEPHEN WELLMAN—U.S. attorney general

  JOSEPHINE BARTLETT—Systems programmer, Littlemeade. Redefiner of the term “machine code.”

  BOB FOSTER—President of the United States of America, such as it is. Soylent.

  RENEE DANDRIDGE—Janitor, Littlemeade. Conceivably the most careful who ever lived.

  LISA FROST—U.S. deputy attorney general, later attorney general

  GABRIELLA CAMPBELL—Late wife of William Connors and therefore possibly a saint

  TURNER LEXINGTON—Chairman of the Gaia Society. Soylent.

  REBECCA BLOOM—Talk show host. Former field hockey player.

  ISOBEL ROSS—Vice president of the USA, then president

  JOHN FINCH—Late president of the USA. Former window washer.

  TOM SHAKE—Director of U.S. DHS. Harvard MBA. Soylent.

  EVA IBARGUREN—Chauffeur, assassin, agent provocateuse. Former prostitute.

  DAVE SIM—Writer/artist of Cerebus the Aardvark, a three-hundred-issue comic that made sense as a continuous story

  OLIVER CARTER—Agent, U.S. CIA. The kind Hollywood thinks all of them are.

  VICTOR APPLETON—Author, Tom Swift books (first series)

  WILLIAM GOLDMAN—Author of The Princess Bride, etc.; screenwriter, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc.

  WILLIAM GOLDING—Author of Lord of the Flies; not to be mistaken for the above even in a very bad light

  NARYA FARTHINGSWORTH—Romance novelist and subversive

  LESLIE REYNOLDS—Humorist, detective, bombshell, and widow of Nathaniel Reynolds

  NATHANIEL REYNOLDS—Late SF author, on ice. Molecular biologist. Friend of Ivar Jorgenson.

  IVAR JORGENSON—Late SF author, fantasist, legendary charmer

  JACK BERNSTEIN—Astronaut. Physicist, physician, civilian (defined as someone who can’t be hanged for quitting his job).

  SAM QUINN—Astronaut. Pilot, two-star general USAF.

  STEPHEN EDMUNDSON—Astronaut. Weapons officer, major USAF.

  MARTIN TILLERY—Astronaut. Engineer, ABD physicist, commander USN.

  CHARLEY LOOMIS—Astronaut. Aviator, weapons officer, commodore USN.

  CLAIRE DAUGHENBAUGH—Astronaut. Physician, captain USN. Unexpectedly interesting person.

  Anklebiters:

  SOCRATES—Conscience of society. Engaging pest.

  WIELAND—Smith and weaponeer. Friendly guy who only ever gets mad if someone burns his barn down.

  SET—Godslayer. Not disposed to cut anyone slack.

  Backdrop:

  SOYLENTS—Activists whose reforms always seem to shorten the lifespans of human beings

  TRIPLE CRASH—The collapse of the stock market, the dollar, and U.S. productivity in the same year

  LITTLEMEADE OPERATION SYSTEMS—The outfit that finally succeeded in making nanotechnology happen. Able to weather Soylent harassment due to its original charter as a recycling firm, rendering it bulletproof. Later absorbed by Watchstar, a corporation whose stated goal was to remove debris from the sky.

  WYNDHAM LAUNCH—An Ecuadorean company established by U.S. citizens who were disillusioned by NASA’s redefining itself as an organization that makes TV shows—dull ones.

  BRIAREUS—1) A mission to use nanotech to bring back an asteroid for use by Earth industry 2) In Greek mythology, a Titan with fifty heads and a hundred arms, who set out to conquer Heaven

  JNAIT—The Joint Negotiating Alliance of Indian Tribes, intended to present a united front to outsiders irrespective of internal disputes

  LILITH.COM—The uncensored search engine. Named for a character of Biblical mythology who never got to tell her side of the story.

  AERO TRANSCIELO—Successor company to Wyndham Launch. Employee-owned.

  PLANETS SYMPHONY—Composed by Gustav Holst. Much of the soundtrack of The Right Stuff.

  ANDES MOTORS—An offshoot of Aero Transcielo

  NATIONAL FIREARM REGISTRY—A federal police organization undermining the authority of states whose laws do not infringe the right to keep and bear arms

  AOL-CBS—Principal media outlet in the United States of America. Keeps computer dossiers on its investors.

  ACME—Only delivery service in history with a suborbital division. Overnight delivery, anywhere on Earth, up to ten tons.

  OTEC—Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, generating power from the temperature differential between surface water and water below 100 fathoms, which is always at 277 Kelvin everywhere except near volcanoes. First operational system was built in the 1920s. Due to the nutrients in the coolant pumped up, the only pollutant is fish.

  TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN

  N-Space

  Playgrounds of the Mind

  Destiny’s Road<
br />
  Rainbow Mars

  Scatterbrain

  The Draco Tavern

  Ringworld’s Children

  Stars and Gods

  WITH EDWARD M. LERNER

  Fleet of Worlds

  Juggler of Worlds

  Destroyer of Worlds

  Betrayer of Worlds

  Fate of Worlds

  WITH STEVEN BARNES

  Achilles’ Choice

  The Descent of Anansi

  Saturn’s Race

  The Moon Maze Game

  WITH JERRY POURNELLE and STEVEN BARNES

  The Legacy of Heorot

  Beowulf’s Children

  WITH BRENDA COOPER

  Building Harlequin’s Moon

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Larry Niven is the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces. He lives in Chatsworth, California.

  Matthew Joseph Harrington is the author of Soul Survivor. He is currently living with fantasy artist Valerie Anne Shoemaker and four cats in San Jose, California.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  THE GOLIATH STONE

  Copyright © 2013 by Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Drive Communications, New York

  Cover art © 2012 by Shutterstock

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-3323-0 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9781429960717 (e-book)

  First Edition: June 2013