Solstice

by David Hewson

  'No.' He looked offended. 'Do I come across as that arrogant?'

  'A joke, Michael.'

  'Right. It was a friend of mine. Let's leave it at that. I played my part. Those big wings I told you about? They were mine and mine alone. I was very much into engineering at the time, as much as solar astronomy, the two went hand in hand. Those things that put the juice there in the first place, they had my signature on them. Neat stuff too, even if I say so myself.'

  She took her hand away and looked into his face. Somewhere underneath the surface there lurked a bright, animated side to Lieberman's character, and she couldn't work out why he kept it hidden sometimes.

  'The way you talk about it, I guess it never happened. That must have hurt.'

  His eyes flashed, and there was a spark of anger there she hadn't seen before.

  'Hurt? You don't know the half of it. This friend of mine, she could sweet-talk the birds out of the trees. She went away, talked to all these grey people in Washington, in NASA. We were at Berkeley then, so they were reluctant to begin with. More money for the hippies, that kind of thing. But then, all of a sudden, we got bankrolled. Right out of the blue, a long-term R&D budget to design and build the thing. All the way through to a launch on the Shuttle, which was still in the planning stage itself back then, of course.'

  'Whatever came afterwards, that was an achievement, Michael. You should feel proud.'

  He turned to stare at her, and it wasn't a pleasant look.

  'Really?'

  She stuttered, 'I — if you don't want to talk about it — '

  'Hey' — he touched her arm lightly — 'I'm sorry. You touched a raw nerve. I apologize.'

  'So what happened?' she asked, and wondered whether she wanted to hear the answer.

  'We began to build it. This friend and me, and a team of some of the brightest people you ever met. And it was like heaven. This was an idea that combined everything you could dream about. Space, exploration, advanced engineering, and guess what? We got to save the world at the other end too. I can't tell you what that felt like. I used to walk through the city, looking at the smog and the fumes coming out of the cars, thinking one day, one day soon, we just pop the satellite in the sky, work out some way of defraying the launch costs, the ground infrastructure, and bang. There we are. Limitless, constantly renewable energy, at negligible cost. Forever and ever. Amen.'

  'They pulled the budget?'

  He just looked at the ocean and said nothing.

  'They'll come back to it one day, Michael. If it makes sense like you say.'

  'Oh, they'll come back to it. You just have to look at the numbers to understand that. It may be fifty years. It may be a hundred. But at some stage we have to realize that this is the only luxury-grade oxygenated planet available to us right now, and we can't keep choking it the way we have this past century. Nothing else makes the grade, not with the kind of energy demands we take for granted nowadays. Maybe someone will come up with some other way of meeting the bill. Right now this is the only one I know.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  He looked at her, puzzled. 'About what?'

  'That it won't be you. In all probability.'

  He laughed out loud. 'You think that bothers me? Jesus, Mo. Who gives a damn about that? I'm a scientist. I write this stuff so that someone else, a year, a decade, a century down the line, gets to pillage it, make it better, fix the places where I went wrong. Am I pissed we're not doing this now? You bet. But it's not because I don't get to work on the thing. It's because…'

  'Yes…'

  'It's because we fritter away our time here, Mo. We're just so blind to what goes on, we veer from gloom and doom on the one hand — the sky is falling, the sky is falling — to thinking what the hell, it's all someone else's job. When really the answer lies somewhere in between.'

  She looked at her watch. 'Aren't we supposed to be getting a briefing or something real soon?'

  'Yeah.' He didn't look ready to move yet.

  'And after they killed the project, that's when you moved into what you do now?'

  'I became the sunspot guy. Overnight. A wondrous transformation. No big budgets, no engineering. No teamwork. Never again.'

  'And your friend?' she asked hesitantly.

  He said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the blue horizon.

  'Well…' Mo glanced at her watch again.

  'They didn't kill the budget. Just showed us its true direction. I didn't like where it was heading, but my friend stuck with it. It all fell apart a few years ago anyway.'

  She watched him in silence; this was an interior conversation, not one in which she was involved.

  'We were naive,' he said. 'We were just this bunch of bright kids trying to save the world, trying to tag on this giant pair of wings to a satellite, work on some way of converting all that nice sunshine into a big continuous burst of microwave energy that could take the place of a good number of power stations. We didn't watch the news much. Didn't even take any account of that great speech that Reagan made. March twenty-third, 1983. I stuck that date right into my memory later, when it all became so clear.'

  She shook her head. 'I don't understand.'

  'We thought we were working on a nice little government project to solve the world's energy crisis. It was all bullshit. We were just little cogs in some huge wheel, and I should have guessed it, should have known from all these guys in black suits who kept hanging around, watching the budgets, making sure everything was kept nice and tight and secure.'

  The sun was getting low in the sky. There was a hint of coolness in the evening air; it made the skin prickle on her bare forearms.

  'I shouldn't be telling you this, Mo. I signed pieces of paper. They made me.'

  'Then don't.'

  'To hell with them. It was all a fraud. There was never a plan to put an SPS in the sky. We were just the power plant for Ronnie's bee in the bonnet at the time. Remember the Strategic Defense Initiative? Star Wars, the press called it. A neat little circlet of bite-your-ass satellites spanning the globe. Strictly on a deterrent basis, you understand. Ho, ho. The Soviets throw up a missile, my little SPS unit, now transformed into some kind of orbiting Power Ranger or something, takes it out with microwave, laser, some kind of particle beam, you name it. They had all manner of shit getting tacked on its backside. That's when I found out. I walked in one day and finally got a glimpse of the total design blueprint, not just my part of it. These were war satellites, you'd better believe it. God knows what crap they wanted to build in there, and every bit of it got to live because of what I was making for them. I walked out. Like I said, my friend stayed, and I never did understand that. In the end, SDI itself went down, and all my work with it, I guess. Now no one wants to know about SPS. We just peer ten years ahead and say, "Looks good to me…" It's all such a waste.'

  And it was, she understood that, just by looking at the pain, the anger in his face.

  'I don't know what to say, Michael.'

  'You don't need to say anything. I'm sorry I dropped that on you.'

  'No need to be. And after that?'

  She knew how to hold on to you when she wanted an answer, he thought.

  'After that I got less serious. I got married. Then I got unmarried. I floated around the bright world of solar academia doing my sunspot act. It pays the bills. It gets me by.'

  'But you think it's a waste…'

  'Yeah.' He thought of Bill Rollinson again, and all those stories about Air Force One. 'I think it's all such a waste. And I wish I wasn't so damn stupid, I wish I wasn't here being some kind of weatherman for these guys when there's so much bigger stuff going on around us.'

  Bill Rollinson and a couple of big silver aeroplanes falling from the sky, leaving a smear of radiation-hot metal across the earth.

  'Oh my God,' he said softly.

  'Michael?'

  But he never heard her. He was staring at the dying sun on the horizon, wondering whether to feel stupid, mad, or both. And who to take
it out on first.

  CHAPTER 14

  Argument

  Langley, Virginia, 1748 UTC

  'I can't believe these things didn't get run through S&T,' Helen Wagner said, surprised by the sudden, unnatural venom inside her voice.

  They were in Levine's office. It was approaching midday. Outside the day seemed gripped by a piercing white brilliance. Her head hurt. The air-conditioning sang a high-pitched whine but did nothing to keep out the enervating heat.

  Levine and Barnside were staring at her from the opposite side of the table, clearly wishing she were someplace else. There should have been more people in the room for a meeting of this nature, she thought. It was too soon to say that the papers in front of her gave any clue as to the fate of Air Force One, but the possibility had to be there. And Levine was sitting on this. It was all so obvious. He was biding his time, hoping the game would move on before the full story worked its way out.

  'First things first,' she said. 'Why the hell is Operations funding part of a scientific project? Without the knowledge of S&T? Or input?'

  Barnside shrugged. He had his jacket over the back of his chair and sat in a white, neatly ironed shirt with a button-down collar and plain blue tie. Sweat stains ran down from beneath his arms halfway to his waist. His hair looked matted with sweat, and a single prominent vein on his forehead seemed more visible than usual, seemed to move physically as he spoke.

  'Look, Helen,' he said, a note of reasonableness in his voice. "There are territories here. Just because Sundog's involved with scientific data doesn't put it in S&T's court automatically.'

  'Bullshit,' she yelled, and knew her voice was too loud, her tone all wrong. She closed her eyes. The room was stifling. Her headache was getting worse. She looked at Barnside. There was a mocking smile on his face; he won a point there. She was the one who lost her grip.

  'We're colleagues, Helen. We need to be able to work with each other on this one.'

  'Sure, Dave. So turn over the files to me and let me judge for myself.'

  'Jesus…' The vein was throbbing, bright and sweaty on his tanned forehead. 'You know I can't do that. At least I hope you know. Do you read the Ops manuals here or what? Work your way into this job, please.'

  Barnside's face was flushed. He seemed on the edge — they all did, probably, which was understandable in the circumstances.

  'I am asking a very reasonable question,' she continued. 'Why did Operations fund part of Sundog without the knowledge of S&T? Even if there was an operational reason — and I don't accept that for one moment — we should have been informed.'

  'Like I said. Read the manual,' Barnside grunted. 'It's under "need to know". And "cell structure". If we wanted your input, we would have asked for it. But we didn't. If you want corporate niceties, go get yourself a job in the charitable sector.'

  She glared at Levine, who just shrugged. 'Hey, he's right. It wasn't me that rubber-stamped the decision to go into Sundog. Our involvement was low-key and pretty basic. Understand this, people weren't asking us for scientific advice. They were asking us for management and security, some comfort factor.'

  'And a damn good service they got…'

  'Christ,' Barnside groaned. 'We don't have room for this, Helen. Are you here to help or what?'

  Levine wagged a finger. 'Enough. Keep a handle on those tempers, both of you. Jesus, it's hot in here. Something go wrong with the goddamn air system?'

  Helen couldn't believe how bad she felt. She prayed she wouldn't faint.

  'So what happened with security, then, Dave?' she asked.

  'Sundog was a low-priority project for us, the entire thing was virtually on ice,' Barnside replied. 'We're not sitting on it every damn day.'

  'Great. And now it's out of control.'

  'No one's saying that,' Levine objected. 'All they're saying to us is that the space side of things has gone off-line.'

  She couldn't believe her ears. 'Let's put it another way. We no longer have control of the major part of the system.'

  'Or direct proof that anyone else has either,' Barnside said grimly. His eyelids were half-closed.

  They all felt terrible in this overheated, airless room — and she sensed it was more than just the heat.

  'On the basis of the information you've given me,' she continued, 'it is my opinion that Sundog, if it were in the hands of a hostile party, could have been responsible for downing Air Force One. It has the military capability. With the solar configuration we have right now, the increase in radiation and general activity, the amount of pure radiation it could generate, God knows…'

  'That's conjecture,' Barnside muttered. 'Pure conjecture.'

  'And in any case,' Levine added, 'who the hell knows how to use it? Not the Libyans. Not the Iraqis. This just isn't their bag. We'd know if they had that kind of capability. Like I said, Sundog was basically on ice, one experimental satellite in place, three ground stations. The damn thing didn't work reliably when we tried messing with it. How the hell could anyone else take control?'

  'I don't know,' she replied, and her headache moved up several notches. 'But the answer's there somewhere. So what about these Gaia people?'

  'Cranks,' Barnside grumbled. 'Are we going through all that again?'

  Levine lit a cigarette. She watched the foul-smelling smoke curl into the air, steal what little oxygen there was from it, and wondered whether she might throw up. 'We do routine monitoring of a few cults these days, Wagner,' he said, the grey fumes seeping out of his mouth. 'Makes sense. Some of them are serious bad news. But get this in perspective. There's a big difference between hacking a government Web site and stealing control of a billion-dollar space project. It just isn't a viable notion.'

  'Depends how smart they are.'

  'No,' Barnside yelled. 'It depends on a lot more than that. Equipment. Knowledge. Timing.'

  'That's your judgement, Barnside. But you're not a scientist, and I am. You should leave that to me. You should have left it to S&T all along.'

  Barnside glowered at Levine, closed his eyes, felt his forehead, and said, 'Will you tell her how things work around here, Ben? Or do I have to do that as well? I really don't have time for this.'

  Ben Levine stared back at him. The director's bald head was covered in sweat. His eyes looked glazed.

  Helen jumped. Somewhere down the corridor a fire alarm was ringing. She could hear people on the move.

  'Keep quiet, Dave,' Levine said calmly. 'Don't make a fool of yourself.'

  Helen pushed the papers from her lap back onto the table. 'We're wasting time here, gentlemen. I've been through the papers you've supplied to me about Sundog. Even a child could see they're incomplete. I don't have details of the security clearances in Spain, the personnel histories of the key players who've worked on the project in the past, managerial reports — '

  'Hey, hey.' Barnside was waving her down and the sight of his big hand bobbing up and down in the airless space in front of her seemed so infuriating. 'One thing at a time, Helen. This is your first day. You're not even equipped with full security clearance yet. We're adapting to Belinda's loss as much as you. Can't you get that?'

  She glowered at Levine. 'Sir?'

  'Say it.'

  'Did you give me this job precisely because you thought I wouldn't pick these things up? Is that what this is about? Keeping S&T nice and quiet while you try to sweep whatever is out there under the carpet?'

  She could have sworn Barnside was starting to laugh.

  'I warned you, Ben,' the big man muttered eventually. 'Just because she looks like a babe doesn't mean she acts like one.'

  'I resent that — '

  'Enough!' Levine hammered a tightly clenched fist on the table. 'I will say this once and once only,' he announced. 'You people have to work with each other. We don't have space for this kind of behaviour.'

  The noise outside the door was getting oppressive. There were more alarms, the sound of people running down the halls.

  'It's your call,
Dave,' Levine said softly.

  Barnside shrugged. 'Okay, Helen. You're smart. You deserve it. This isn't a question of clearance, by the way. It's simple need to know. You can read about that in the manual. We have an NOC inside Gaia. Nonofficial cover. Someone who doesn't work for us directly but gets paid by someone else and still does the job after all. Been there for over a year and come out with precious little, nothing that links them firmly into this. It's all supposition right now. But we're working on it. And a lot more besides. I'll get the files over to you. And…'

  Barnside blinked, maniacally, she thought. Down the corridor the commotion seemed to be getting louder.

  'I want you to read the manual on cell operation. I shouldn't have told you that. It breaks all the rules, but maybe they're made for breaking sometimes.'

  'I don't need threats,' she said, and heard how shrill she sounded.

  'This isn't a threat…'

  Barnside's voice was cracking, she thought. This whole conversation was going crazy.

  Levine turned on Barnside and his face was, bright red. Something happened in the air, like the sudden sharp prick of an invisible needle. All three of them winced, stared across the table. She saw a greasy line of blood appear at Barnside's nostrils. Then the pain returned, and this time it was so real, like a hammer blow in the head, and they were all screaming and yelling, holding their hands to their scalps, wishing away this hidden weight that pressed down on them from the sky, made it feel as if their brains might explode out of their ears.

  There was a sound, something electrical, and in the corner of the room the PCs went quiet, then the lights failed, the air-conditioning began to wind down, everything that was modern in the office seemed to lose its lifeblood, the world became acutely still except for this ringing, agonizing and loud, that ran inside and outside her head.

  She didn't know how long this lasted. It could have been minutes. When it was over, the weight lifted in an instant, and left behind a sea of different pains and sensations. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. The sleeve of her cream silk shirt was covered with mucus that had poured from her nose. Her eyes, she could feel, were wet with tears. Across the table Barnside's nose was pouring blood; it ran down his face like the makeup of a tragic clown. Ben Levine had his head in his hands, face down on the desk. Somewhere outside a woman was screaming.