Free Investments by Walter Jon Williams

though he didn’t know much about geology, he was going to learn.
    Next morning Martinez rose early, took the cup of coffee that his orderly handed him, and called Ahmet.
    “I’d like to get up to the railhead,” he said. “Can you do it?”
    “Absolutely, my lord.”
    “I also don’t want a fuss. I’m tired of delegations. Can we go, just the two of us, with you as my guide?”
    Martinez sensed a degree of personal triumph in Ahmet’s reply. “Of course, lord captain! That’s easier than anything!“
    The trip to the railhead was on a train bringing out supplies, and Martinez spent the ride in the car reserved for the transport crews. He wore civilian clothes and heavy boots, which he thought disappointed Ahmet, who wanted a fully-dressed military hero to show off to his colleagues. As it was, Martinez had to put up with Ahmet’s loud reminiscences of the Corona and the battle of Hone-bar, which managed to imply that Martinez, under Ahmet’s brilliant direction, had managed to polish off the Naxids in time for breakfast.
    “That’s when we swung onto our new heading and dazzled the Naxids with our engine flares, so they couldn’t see our supports,” Ahmet said, and then gave Martinez a confidential wink. “Isn’t that right, my lord?”
    “Yes,” Martinez said. And then, peering out the window, “What’s up ahead?”
    The track for the supersonic train was necessarily nearly straight and quite level. It approached the mountains on huge ramps, built by equally huge machines and pierced with archways for rivers and future roads. Terraces had been gouged into mountains to provide the necessarily wide roadbed, and tunnels bored through solid rock. The gossamer-seeming bridges that spanned distant valleys were, on closer inspection, built of trusses wider than a bus and cables the thickness of Martinez’ leg. The trains themselves, floating on magnetic fields above the rails, would be equipped with vanes that canceled out their sonic shockwave, but even so the tunnels had to be lined with baffles and sound suppressors to keep the mountain from being shaken down.
    At the railhead Martinez was treated to a view of the giant drilling machine that bored the tunnel, and the other machines that cleared the rubble, braced the tunnel, and laid the track. The machines were sophisticated enough, and their operators experienced enough, that everyone seemed confident that their tunnel would meet the northbound crews, coming from the other side of the mountain, well ahead of schedule.
    “So we can earn that big completion bonus from the Chee Company,” Ahmet grinned. “Isn’t that right, my lord?”
    “Good for you,” Martinez said. He waited for a moment alone with Ahmet before he asked the next question.
    “Wasn’t there a big delay a month or so ago? Can we stop there on our way back?”
    Ahmet gave Martinez a wink. “Let me talk to the engine-driver.”
    They took a ride back on a small engine that was shuttling rails to the construction site, and the Lai-own driver was amenable to a brief delay. “Marker 593,” Ahmet told him, and the engine slowed and braked. Ahmet, an electric lantern in his hand, hopped off into the dark tunnel, and Martinez heard a splash.
    “Careful, my lord,” Ahmet said. “It’s a bit damp here.”
    Martinez lowered himself to the roadbed and followed the bobbing lantern. Upheaval of the mountain range had tipped the geologic strata nearly vertical here. “They called it a pluton, or a laccolith, or something like that,” Ahmet said. “Whatever it is, it’s damn hard. The drill couldn’t get through it. There it is.” He brandished the lantern.
    A deep gray stripe lay along the strata, a river of mica flecks gleaming in the lantern like a river of stars. “That’s it ?” Martinez asked. He could span the layer with his two arms. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a pluton.
    “Yes, my lord. They had to do a redesign of the drill head.”
    Couldn’t they blast it?