by Ben Bova
Yet Nobu understood that Umetzu had come to him. I called and he came, Yamagata told himself. I’m not without power here. The fact that Umetzu was apparently a few years younger than he should have made Nobu feel even more in command of this meeting. But it didn’t.
Umetzu had arrived at the Yamagata family estate in an unmarked helicopter, accompanied by four younger men. Nobu had chosen his family’s home for this meeting so that they would be safe from the prying eyes and news media snoops that were unavoidable in the corporate offices in New Kyoto. Here, on his spacious estate up in the hills, surrounded by servants who had been with the family for generations, he could have airtight security.
They sat in a small room paneled in polished oak, the tea set between them. The wall to Nobu’s right was a sliding shoji screen; to his left a window looked out on a small, enclosed courtyard and raked stone garden. The kimono-clad women who had served the tea had left the room. Umetzu’s aides were being fed in another room, far enough away so that they could not overhear their master’s discussion with Yamagata, close enough so that they could reach him quickly if they had to. Nobu understood without being told that those young men were bodyguards.
“What do you want of me?” Umetzu asked, dropping all pretense of polite conversation. He had not touched the lacquered cup before him.
Nobu took a sip of the hot, soothing tea before answering. “There is a task that must be done in complete secrecy.”
Umetzu said nothing.
“I had thought of negotiating with one of the Islamic groups,” Nobu went on. “They are accustomed to the concept of martyrdom.”
“Yet you have asked to speak with me. In private.”
“It is a very delicate matter.”
Umetzu took in a long, slow breath. “A matter that involves death.”
“Many deaths, most likely.”
“The followers of the Flower Dragon’s way do not fear death. Many of them believe in reincarnation.”
“You do not?” Nobuhiko asked.
“My beliefs are not the subject of this meeting.”
Nobu bowed his head a centimeter or so.
“Just what is it that you require?” asked Umetzu.
Now Nobuhiko hesitated, trying to fathom what lay behind his guest’s hooded eyes. Can I trust him? Is this the best way for me to go? He wished he had his father here to advise him, but the elder Yamagata was still locked away in the Himalayas, playing at being a lama.
“What I require,” Nobu said at last, “must never be traced back to me or to Yamagata Corporation. Is that clear? Never.”
Umetzu almost smiled. “It must be truly horrible, for you to be so afraid.”
“Horrible enough,” said Nobu. “Horrible enough.”
“Then what is it?”
“The skytower. It must be destroyed.”
Umetzu drew in a breath. “I have been informed that the skytower is being built by nanomachines.”
Surprised, Nobuhiko blurted, “Where did you hear that?”
Allowing himself a thin smile, Umetzu replied, “Flower Dragon has contacts in many places, including the New Morality.”
“I did not realize that they are using nanomachines.”
“Of a sort. They are within the law, apparently, but just barely.”
“Perhaps we could stop them legally, through the international courts.”
Umetzu shook his head the barest fraction of a centimeter. “Do not put your faith in the courts. Direct action is better.”
“Then you are willing to help me?” Nobuhiko asked.
“Of course. The skytower must be destroyed.”
“Yes. And it must be destroyed in a manner that will discredit the very idea of building such towers. It must be brought down in a disaster so stunning that no one will ever dare to bring up the idea of building another.”
Nobuhiko felt his cheeks flushing and realized that he was squeezing his miniature teacup so hard its edge was cutting into the flesh of his palm.
Umetzu seemed unmoved. “How do you intend to accomplish this tremendous feat?”
Regaining his self-control, Nobuhiko put the lacquered cup back on its tray as he answered, “My technical people know how to bring it down. They have all the information we require. What I need is men who will do the task.”
“Men who will become martyrs.”
Nobuhiko bowed his head once again.
“That is not terribly difficult,” said Umetzu. “There are those who welcome death, especially if they believe they will accomplish something of worth in their dying.”
“But it must be kept absolutely secret,” Nobuhiko repeated in an urgent hiss. “It must never be traced back to Yamagata Corporation.”
Umetzu closed his eyes briefly. “We can recruit martyrs from elsewhere: even the fat Americans have fanatics among their New Morality groups.”
“Truly?” Nobuhiko asked.
“But what of your own technicians? Will they be martyred also?”
“That will not be necessary.”
“Yet they will have the knowledge that you wish kept secret. Once the tower falls, they will know that you have done it.”
“They will be far from Earth when that happens,” Nobuhiko said. “I have already had them transferred to Yamagata operations in the Asteroid Belt.”
Umetzu considered this for a moment. “I have heard that the Asteroid Belt is a very dangerous place.”
“It can be.”
“Wars have been fought there. Many were killed.”
“I have heard that the Flower Dragon has followers even in the Belt. Loyal followers.”
Umetzu understood Nobu’s unspoken request. This time he did smile thinly. “So your people will not be martyrs. Instead they will fall victims to accidents.”
“As you said,” Nobu replied, “the Belt is a very dangerous place.”
CIUDAD DE CIELO
Elliott Danvers was lonely after Molina left for Australia. He missed their meals together, their adversarial chats, the verbal cut and parry that kept his mind stimulated.
Over the weeks that followed Molina’s departure, Danvers tried to forget his own needs and buried himself in his work. No, he reminded himself time and again. Not my work. God’s work. He felt puzzled that Atlanta had shown no visible reaction to his report that nanotechnology was being used to build the skytower. He had expected some action, or at least an acknowledgement of his intelligence. Nothing. Not a word of thanks or congratulations on a job well done. Well, he told himself, a good conscience is our only sure reward. And he plunged himself deeper into his work. Still, he felt nettled, disappointed, ignored.
He went to Bracknell and asked permission to convert one of the warehouse buildings into a nondenominational chapel. As the sky-tower neared completion, some of the buildings fell into disuse, some of the workers departed for their homes. Danvers noted that there seemed to be fewer Yankee and Latino construction workers in the streets, and more Asian computer and electronics technicians.
“A chapel?” Bracknell looked surprised when Danvers raised the question.
Standing in front of Bracknell’s desk, Danvers nodded. “You have several empty buildings available. I won’t need much in way of—”
“You mean you’ve been working here all this time without a church building?” Bracknell looked genuinely surprised. “Where do you hold your services?”
“Outdoors, mostly. Sometimes in my quarters, for smaller groups.”
Bracknell’s office was far from imposing. Nothing more than a corner room in the corrugated-metal operations building. He sat at a scuffed and dented steel desk. One wall held a smart screen that nearly reached the low ceiling. Another had photos of the tower at various stages of its construction pasted to it. Two windows looked out on the streets and, beyond one of them, the dark trunk of the tower, rising above the distant green hills and into the heavens.
Gesturing to the plain plastic chair in front of his desk, Bracknell said, “I thought
we already had a church here, someplace.”
Danvers smiled bitterly as he settled his bulk in the creaking little chair. “You’re not a churchgoer.”
With an almost sheepish grin, Bracknell admitted, “You’ve got me there.”
“Are you a Believer?”
Bracknell thought it over for a moment, his head cocked slightly. “Yes, I think I can truthfully say that I am. Not in any organized religion, understand. But—well, the universe is so blasted orderly. I guess I do believe there’s some kind of presence overseeing everything. Childhood upbringing, I suppose. It’s hard to overcome.”
“You don’t have to apologize about it,” Danvers said, a little testily. He was thinking, Not in any organized religion, the man says. He’s one of those intellectual esthetes who rationalizes everything and thinks that that’s religion. Nothing more than a damnable Deist, at best.
Bracknell called up a map of the city and told his computer to highlight the unused buildings. The wall screen showed four of them in red.
“Take your pick,” he said to Danvers, gesturing to the screen.
Danvers stood up and walked to the map, studying it for several moments. “This one,” he said at last, rapping his knuckles against the screen.
“That’s the smallest one,” said Bracknell.
“My congregations have not been overwhelming. Besides, the location is good, close to the city’s center. More people will see their friends and associates going to services. It’s a proven fact that people tend to follow a crowd.”
“It’s the curious monkey in our genes,” Bracknell said easily.
Danvers tried to erase the frown that immediately came over him.
“Was that too Darwinian for you?”
“We are far more than monkeys,” Danvers said tightly.
“I suppose we are. But we’re mammals; we enjoy the companionship of others. We need it.”
“That’s true enough, I suppose.”
“So why don’t you join Lara and me at dinner tonight? We can talk over the details of your new chapel.”
Danvers was surprised at the invitation. He knew, in his mind, that a man could be a non-Believer and still be a decent human being. But this man Bracknell, he’s leading this nearly blasphemous skytower project. I mustn’t let him lull me into friendship, Danvers told himself. He may be a pleasant enough fellow, but he is the enemy. You either do God’s work or the devil’s. There is no neutrality in the struggle between good and evil.
The restaurant was only half full, Bracknell saw as he came through the wide-open double doors with Lara. A lot of the construction people had already left. Once the geostationary platform was finished, they would shift entirely to operational status.
He saw that Rev. Danvers was already seated at a table, chatting with the restaurant’s owner and host, a tall suave Albanian who towered over his mestizo kitchen staff. As soon as the host saw Bracknell and Lara enter, he left Danvers in midsentence and rushed to them.
“Slow night tonight,” he said by way of greeting.
Bracknell said, “Not for much longer. Lots of people heading here. By this time next year you’ll have to double the size of this place.”
The host smiled and pointed out new paintings, all by local artists, hanging on the corrugated metal walls. Village scenes. Cityscapes of Quito. One showed the mountains and the skytower in Dayglo orange. Bracknell thought they were pretty ordinary and said nothing, while Lara commented cheerfully on their bright colors.
The dinner with Rev. Danvers started off rather awkwardly. For some reason the minister seemed guarded, tight-lipped. But then Lara got him to talking about his childhood, his early days in the slums of Detroit.
’You have no idea of what it was like growing up in that cesspool of sin and violence. If it weren’t for the New Morality, Lord knows where I’d be,” Danvers said over a good-sized ribeye steak. “They worked hard to clean up the streets, get rid of the crooks and drug pushers. They worked hard to clean me up.”
Lara asked lightly, “Were you all that dirty?”
Danvers paled slightly. “I was a prizefighter back then,” he said, his voice sinking low. “People actually paid money to see two men try to hurt each other, try to pound one another into unconsciousness.”
“Really?”
“Women, too. Women fought in the ring and the crowds cheered and screamed, like animals.”
Bracknell saw that Danvers’s hands were trembling. But Lara pushed further, asking, “And the New Morality changed all that?”
“Yes, praise God. Thanks to their workers, cities like Detroit became safer, more orderly. Criminals were jailed.”
“And their lawyers, too, from what I hear,” Bracknell said. He meant it as a joke, but Danvers did not laugh and Lara shot him a disapproving glance.
“Many lawyers went to jail,” Danvers said, totally serious, “or to retraining centers. They were protecting the criminals instead of the innocent victims! They deserved whatever they got.”
“With your size,” Lara said, “I’ll bet you were a very good prizefighter.”
Danvers smiled ruefully. “They could always find someone bigger.”
“But you beat them, didn’t you?”
“No,” he answered truthfully. “Not very many of them.”
“And now you fight for people’s souls,” Lara said.
“Yes.”
“That’s much better, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Bracknell looked around the restaurant. Only about half the tables were taken. “Looks like a slow night,” he said, trying to change the subject.
“Mondays are always slow,” said Lara.
“Not for us,” Bracknell said. “We topped off the LEO platform today. It’s all finished and ready to open for business.”
“Really!” Lara beamed at him. “That’s ahead of schedule, isn’t it?”
Bracknell nodded happily. “Skytower Corporation’s going to make a public announcement about it at their board meeting next month. Big news push. I’m going to be on the nets.”
“That’s wonderful!”
Danvers was less enthusiastic. “Does this mean that you’re ready to launch satellites from the LEO platform?”
“We already have contracts for four launches.”
“But the geostationary platform isn’t finished yet, is it?”
“We’re ahead of schedule there, too.”
“But it’s not finished.”
“Not for another six months,” Bracknell said, feeling almost as if he were admitting a wrongdoing. Somehow Danvers had let the air out of his balloon.
By the time they finished their desserts and coffee, theirs was the only occupied table in the restaurant. The robot waiter was already sweeping the floor and two of the guys from the kitchen were stacking chairs atop tables to give the robot leeway for its chore.
Danvers bade them good night out on the sidewalk and headed for his quarters. Bracknell walked with Lara, arm in arm.
As they passed through the pools of light and shadow cast by the streetlamps, Lara said, “Rev. Danvers seems a little uncomfortable with the idea that we’re living in sin.”
Bracknell grinned down at her. “Best place to live, all things considered.”
“Really? Is that what you think?”
Looking up at the glowing lights of the tower that split the night in half, Bracknell murmured, “Urn … Paris is probably better.”
“That’s where the board meeting’s going to be, isn’t it?”
“Right,” said Bracknell. “That’s where Skytower Corporation turns me into a news media star.”
“My handsome hero.”
“Want to come with me?” he asked.
“To Paris?”
“Sure. You can do some clothes shopping there.”
“Are you saying I need new clothes?”
He stopped in the darkness between streetlamps and slipped his arms around her waist. “You’ll need a new dress fo
r the wedding, won’t you?”
“Wedding?” Even in the shadows he could see her eyes go wide with surprise.
Bracknell said, “With the tower almost finished and all this publicity the corporation’s going to generate, I figure I ought to make an honest woman of you.”
“You chauvinist pig!”
“Besides,” he went on, “it’ll make Danvers feel better.”
“You’re serious?” Lara asked. “This isn’t a joke?”
He kissed her lightly. “Dead serious, darling. Will you marry me?”
“In Paris?”
“If that’s what you want.”
Lara flung her arms around his neck and kissed him as hard as she could.
GEOSTATIONARY PLATFORM
“Look on my works, ye mighty,” quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, the chief engineer, “and despair.”
In a moment of whimsy brought on by their joy at his birth, his parents had named him after the poet. Emerson suspected their euphoria was helped along by the recreational drugs they used; certainly he saw enough evidence of that while he was growing up in the caravan city that trundled through the drought-dessicated former wheat belt of Midwestern America.
His father was a mechanic, his mother a nurse: both highly prized skills in the nomadic community. And both of them loved poetry. Hence his name.
Everybody called him Waldo. He learned to love things mechanical from his father and studied mechanical engineering through the computer webs and satellite links that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Once he grew into manhood Emerson left the caravan and entered a real, bricks-and-mortar engineering college. All he wanted was a genuine degree so that he would have real credentials to show prospective employers. No caravan life for Waldo. He wanted to settle down, get rich (or at least moderately prosperous), be respectable, and build new things for people.
His life didn’t quite work out that way. There was plenty of work for a bright young engineer, rebuilding the shattered electrical power grid, erecting whole new cities to house the refugees driven from their homes by the greenhouse floods, designing solar power farms in the clear desert skies of the Southwest. But the various jobs took him from one place to another. He was still a nomad; he just stayed in one place a bit longer than his gypsying parents did.