Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

Lanthanum

138.9055

Immortality

Lanthanum, like many of the other so-called "rare earths" is not

particularly rare. Unless, of course, you live in one of the worlds of

the Reaches?that attenuated region at the outermost fringes of the Milky

Way Galaxy directly opposite Earth, where one half the sky is rich in

stars and the other half almost black. Through an accident of stellar

evolution, lanthanum is almost unknown in the Reaches. Most of its uses

are trivial, of course?in optical glass applications, as a cracking

catalyst, in certain lasers. But it also happens to be necessary as an

intermetallic hydride in the complex process that is used to create the

drug rather imprecisely (for it's only good for ten thousand years) known

as Immortality.

For centuries the worlds of the Reaches smoldered resentfully under the

neglectful rule of the Galactic Technocracy. But the Technocracy

controlled the flow of Immortality, and cut it off at the least hint of

trouble.

Which is why the freighter sailing under the corporate colors of the

venerable firm of Summergarden, Claimjumper & Ting, was given a military

escort. The load of lanthanum it carried was enough to serve a planet's

needs for a century. Or a rebellion's for as long as it took.

The attack began with the explosion of half a dozen neutron bomb mines.

That took out the crew and AIs of the ore freighter without damaging its

cargo. Then Freeman's Raiders popped their ships out of n-space and

engaged the escorts with directed matter-disrupters. Torpedoes were

launched. Sunbombs exploded. Ships grappled and were breached and

boarders swarmed through the gaps with projectile weapons and

monomolecular garottes. Sixty thousand troopers died in the Battle of

Three Suns. Only seventy-three rebels survived.

The handful of survivors hot-wired the ore freighter and used its

contents to jump-start a war that ultimately lasted five hundred years

and laid waste to a third of the galaxy.

Five thousand years later, Freeman himself held a banquet to commemorate

the hijacking. Though the banquet room was small, a good half of the

surviving population of the Reaches was in attendance. After the

obligatory speeches, the great man stood to propose a toast.

"To the most precious thing in all the universe," he said, raising his

wine glass high. "To life!"