“This will be perfect.” Grea placed the small parcel, still wrapped, on the ground, near two large materials bins, then stepped back and worked on the bracelet on her arm. She saw the two of them looking at her actions and smiled. “This bracelet is a communication unit. At the moment, it is dedicated to the computer in the chamber on Mount Kina. If I press this button, it fixes the location of whatever we select in the memory of the computer. Once we’ve done that, we can remove the containment unit to use elsewhere.” She did so, placing the containment unit in one of the bins, and repeated the action on her bracelet, and then repeated her action with the second bin. “The computer has been programed to action any transport request to the location automatically. When we designed the bracelets, we wanted to be able to let the computer know where each of us was at any time, in case we needed to be transported away from that location in a hurry. However, Nina built in a number of other functions, such as this one. It is presently tied to this magnetic containment unit to fix the location, but she plans to have the function become much broader in the future.” Grea smiled, her smile brightening her normally attractive face. “Nina is a computer genius. She can make any computer stand up and sing songs.” Grea broke off as a voice came from the doorway.
“I’m sorry to intrude, Cora, but I have the first order for your cobalt and copper, so I decided I should tell you. The customer wants five tons of each per week, and he wants to know when he can expect the first delivery.” The voice was a strong male one.
Cora started slightly, and turned to see her father walking up to them. Without thinking, she looked questioningly at Grea.
“I think we can deliver the first load tomorrow morning. Will that do?”
“Perfect. Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m Phelan.” He held out his hand.
“Hello Phelan. I’m Grea.” Grea took Phelan’s hand in the clasp of greeting familiar to Cora and Savi. Slightly confused, Phelan responded in the same way with a broad smile.
“You must represent the supplier, Grea. I look forward to doing business with you.”
“I do too, Phelan.” Grea’s smile was brighter than before.
Phelan turned to Savi.
“Hello, Savi. I see that you’ve looked after Cora well over the past weeks. I understand that the work was successful.”
“Yes, it was, Phelan, although the report was not as easy as it might have been.”
“The problems of accommodating conventional thinking have always been a hurdle. I wish that we could do away with them, and simply put the facts on the table as we see them. That would make our lives a lot simpler, and more productive.” Phelan smiled again at Grea. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Grea. I hope that we can meet again soon.” He turned and walked out of the warehouse.
“I’m sorry to spring that on you, Grea. I should have told my father not to come, but you need have no concerns about him. He agrees completely with the views of Savi and me on the problems of our society, and he’s very discrete.”
“You didn’t spring anything on me, Cora. I’m pleased to have met your father. He reminds me a lot of you.”
Cora looked sharply at Grea, sensing that there was more behind the words than their simple meaning. After a second, she put her surprise down. Grea’s reaction to her father was similar to that of most people who met him the first time, if a little more intense. She knew that he had a personality that seemed to shine through.
Grea collected the magnetic containment unit and they returned to the car. Savi took a different route back to the laboratory, giving Grea an experience of more of the city. They passed the university.
“That’s the university, where we work.”
“Isn’t it interesting that universities always have a similar look about them? If you hadn’t told me what it was, I could probably have guessed.”
“What you say is correct, Grea. I used to work at a different university, on the other side of the city, but it closed down, so I transferred to this one, but they both have the same air of learning about them.”
“It’s sad that it closed. No institution of higher learning should ever be closed. Universities are the cradle of learning. They control the destiny of the population.”
They drove on to the laboratory, entering it through the front door.
“We probably need to show some degree of activity here, to prevent people seeing the lights come on and wondering how that can be without obvious visitors.”
Grea laughed.
“You’re just like Aria, Savi. She always thinks of the tiniest details. That’s one of the reasons that she’s the leader of this work. The rest of us all know that she won’t allow anything to go wrong, unless it is purely an accident.”
Savi was surprised at the comment. He had never considered that he could be compared with Aria, a scientist who exceeded his wildest dreams in every respect. He smiled uncertainly, but did not reply. They walked into the laboratory, seeing that the people there were deeply immersed in their work. Grea walked up to Aria.
“We have our first sale, Aria. I’ll transport to the chamber and set the mining in operation. We need to have five tons each of copper and cobalt by tomorrow.”
“That’s good, Grea. Why don’t you take Cora with you, if she can spare the time? I’m sure she’ll be interested in how you do it.”
“I'd love to come with you, Grea.”
Cora and Grea transported to the mountain, the first time that Cora had experienced the transporter. Her delight was clear on her face as she stepped into the cabinet.
“You need do nothing, Cora. I’ve programed the computer to transport you to the mountain. When the door opens, simply step out. I’ll follow immediately.”
Cora followed the instructions with great trepidation. Although she had seen it done several times, the thought of being transported instantaneously a distance that she and Savi had taken nearly ten hours to drive was difficult for her mind to accept. The reality was just as simple as Grea had made it seem. She entered the cabinet and was surrounded by a gentle radiance. The door clicked shut and immediately clicked open. Unbelieving, she walked out, to find herself in the great chamber on the mountain. The door shut softly behind her, and then opened again, and Grea walked out. Grea saw the look of incredulity on Cora’s face and smiled.
“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I feel almost like you do every time I transport. Even transporting over ten thousand years and tens of millions of miles was no different.
She paused, to allow Cora’s mind to regain its equilibrium. She could remember her wonderment after her first transport. “Let’s go over to the computers across the chamber. Although it is possible for any one of the computers to do the work of mining by particle interference, we’ve dedicated one to it, so that it is not interfered with by any of the other activities. It was not a necessary precaution, as it turns out. Each of these is a quantum computer, with a processing capacity of tens of millions of times the total requirement of everything that needs to be done. However, redundancy is never wasted, particularly when the computers were constructed by other computers.”
Grea sat down at one of the desks and swept her hand over the surface. The built-in computer came to life, and she accessed the program she needed, entitled ‘Mining’, then scrolled down through the list of databases until she found one entitled ‘Cobalt’. She touched that line with her finger, then scrolled quickly to the sub-heading ‘Associated Minerals’. There were several entries under the heading ‘Cobalt Copper’, each one listing a number of other minerals in the deposit. She chose the one headed ‘Cobalt Copper Silica’ and touched it. The page describing the location came up, and Grea checked quickly that it was the deposit she wanted.
“This deposit is located several thousand feet underground. It has reserves of hundreds of thousands of tons of each value mineral.” Grea pointed to the details on the page, showing Cora what to look for. “This database was compiled by several generations of geologists, using pa
rticle survey equipment. It is extremely useful, because it saves a considerable amount of time in searching for a deposit and then quantifying it. Once we have selected the deposit, we point the mining equipment at it like this.” Grea moved her hand to a column at the edge of the page, selected a line and then dragged her finger across the desktop to the deposit. “We could select it by typing, but this is easier.”
A new page opened, on top of the previous one. Grea quickly typed in the quantity desired ‘5 tons cobalt, 5 tons copper per day’, then tapped her finger on the ‘Destination’ heading, causing another page to open, with recorded destinations listed in several possible orders. She selected ‘Date”, chose the last one shown and tapped on ‘Map”. A detailed map opened, showing the geographical location of the destination selected. “I always check the map, to be sure that the destination is the one I want. It is also possible to access the map directly, and then choose the location shown on the map. Is this the place?”
Cora checked the map and nodded.
Grea selected the ‘Proceed’ box, and sat back. “That’s how easy it is. You need to exercise some care, because it is still possible to make a mistake. I always select the deepest deposits shown, to avoid mining close to the surface, where the removal of the mineral from the rocks supporting whatever is above the deposit may cause a small seismic disturbance on the surface. The removal of the mineral mined creates a void, and that is usually filled by the rock above it subsiding. Of course, in really deep deposits, it is possible that the mineral may also be replenished from below. I also check the characteristics of the ore deposit. One should never trust a machine more than is essential, although I’ve never known either the computer or the mining devices to do anything other than what I specified.”
“When will the material be delivered to the warehouse?”
“It is being delivered right now. The device should be able to produce about a fifth of a ton of each metal per hour. It delivers the product to the destination as it produces. Would you like to see the metal?”
Her mind reeling, Cora managed to reply.
“I'd love to, Grea. I’ve never imagined anything like this.”
Grea made a quick entry on the computer screen.
“Let’s go over to the transporter cabinet, Cora. I’ll have us transported to the warehouse. I marked the location when we were there.”
They stepped into the cabinet together, and then out again. They were inside the warehouse. There was sufficient light coming in through the windows to see the small piles building up in the bins, one of silvery metal dust, the other of coppery metal dust. The piles were growing as they watched, the dust simply appearing in the air about three feet above the floor and raining down on the piles. Fascinated, Cora observed the piles growing.
“The mining device will stop production when the daily requirement has been produced. Those metals are atomically pure. The mining is done by the particle transporter selecting the particles of the metal atoms and transporting them here. It’s very simple, really, and very economical. It’s possible to mine the skimpiest trace of any element. It takes all the effort out of purifying waste, for example. We believe that the potential for this form of transport is practically limitless. Each new application requires only that you can imagine it.”
“With this sort of technology, there could never be any poverty in the world, never any unsatisfied need.”
“There is one form of need that can never be satisfied by particle technology, Cora. Greed, for wealth and for power. Wealth can most easily be gained by depriving others of what this technology can provide, and power can be gained by limiting people’s access to what they need.”
Nodding her understanding, Cora walked with her new friend back to the transporter cabinet, and they walked out together into the laboratory. Grea used her bracelet to instruct the computer in the mountain chamber to recover the transporter cabinet from the warehouse.
“It might create unwelcome questions,” she explained.
Chapter 12
Savi walked Cora home to her apartment that night. The air was distinctly colder than last night, and snow started to drift down before they reached her front door, but the two needed the physical exercise after the hours of intense mental activity. Cora was brimming over with her admiration for the scientists and their science. She told Savi of what she had seen. He listened carefully.
“If our society had retained the technology that the ancients had, Savi, there would have been no possibility for the thugs in government to have been in power. Quite apart from the ability to satisfy every reasonable need, it would have been easy for any dissatisfied citizens simply to have gone somewhere else, away from where the government and StateSec could exercise any control over them. It would have been possible to create dwellings and other facilities at the tops of mountains or on islands where no-one else could have known of them, and where getting to them would be extremely difficult. It would have been possible to rescue people from inside prisons, simply by placing a transporter cabinet inside their cells and transporting them out. There is practically nothing that the government could have done to stop them.”
“That’s why the knowledge of this technology was suppressed, Cora. The people who wanted power could not afford to let the average citizens know what was possible. They probably suppressed that knowledge right from the time that our society started to regroup after the last cold cycle.”
“You’re right, Savi. An ignorant citizen would be much easier to control that one who knew the facts. That’s still true.”
“The worst of it is that an ignorant politician is also the result of the system, and an ignorant politician has the ability to disseminate his ignorance throughout the population. If you think of the background to all of the politicians you know, it will shock you. Not one of those whose background I know has ever been faced with the sort of problem the average citizen faces each day. They all come from wealthy families. Not one of them has anything even approaching a scientific background. Not one of them has ever managed a successful business. I believe that the highest educational qualification that any one of them has is a degree in political science, in other words, a training that is appropriate only in politics.”
“Except the President,” Cora reminded him. “He had a huge property empire.”
“Yes, but he started off with a very large loan from his father, and his company is notorious for not paying creditors, for strong-arming the suppliers, and for cheating the buyers and then litigating until the supplier runs out of money. On top of that, several of his companies have become bankrupt. In my books, that is not the sort of man who we should have to run the country. We need someone who really understands the way the world works, in economics, in science and in human terms, and applies his knowledge to the good of the people. We need someone who encourages the scientific community to tell the truth, and who will stand behind them when the ignorant and the fanatical critics attack them with unreasoned arguments. We need someone who reads widely and with understanding. I don’t see any of those qualities in the top politicians.”
“There are not many people like that, Savi. The system has certainly not encouraged their development.”
“Professor Netteos was one of that group, Cora, and I’m sure there are others like him. He could easily have succeeded in business, but he chose to teach, because he wanted to hold back the darkness of ignorance, as he once told me. I do have some doubts about Professor Gerven, but I don’t really know him.”
“Professor Netteos?”
“He was the Professor who appointed me to my position. He often hinted at lines of thought that would bring the students to thinking correctly, but he was arrested after being particularly outspoken during his last lecture to us.”
“That’s right. Now I remember. There was a rumor that his wife died of the same disease as my mother, in a second outbreak of it. The pharmaceutical manufacturer had still not got the production of the medication going, be
cause the disease broke out only sporadically. There was no assurance that the drug would be sold regularly, so they didn’t bother to manufacture it, even though tens of thousands died with each outbreak.” Cora stopped at the door of her home. “Thanks for walking me home, Savi. It’s been a wonderful day.”
“I’m sure there will be more like it. I’ll see you at the university tomorrow.”
Chapter 13
The morning at the university, lecturing to eager students, seemed to be in another time and place. The short interaction with the newcomers at the laboratory, and particularly Cora’s experience with Grea, seemed to represent their real lives now, not the routine of lecturing to the students about methods of evaluating items and information from the ‘distant’ past, a past that was a little over two-thirds the age of the newcomers. The information they were passing on to the students represented only partial fact, a matter that weighed heavily on their minds. The worst of it was that they were barred from informing their students of the real facts, or even hinting at them.
Savi, near the end of the second lecture of the day, felt impelled to give his students some idea of the truth.
“I'd like you to imagine something, to envision a situation without limiting your minds by the theories and views of the present. We all know that history is, to a large extent, a collection of ideas and stories, often told by people with a particular slant on the events they are relating. Ignore those, and consider what you would find if you were to enter a device that could take you back to a time seven thousand years before today, the time we have been told was at the beginning of our existence. What would there be? What could you see, and how would you interpret it? Reenter the device, and go back another five thousand years, and consider what you would find. Try to explain to yourself, as if you were in my position, what caused the changes, and how they took place. Use the device to travel to two thousand years before now, when the first of the written records that we are aware of today started to be created, and repeat the exercise. Now, reenter your device and return to the present. Explain to your listeners what you observed and understood, bearing in mind that they are critical people, wanting to know what you are presenting as facts, and what as speculation. Ask the questions they would ask, and try to answer them, with the knowledge of the artefacts we have from the past, in the light of the actual records of that past which were prepared at the time of what they describe.” Savi paused to look at the students. Several of them were smiling, and some appeared to be either confused or angry. “When you have done all that, write down your thoughts and your views. That is what we, as lecturers, attempt to do. It is tempting to simply accept the common view, but is it realistic in the light of what we know? Science is a constant quest after knowledge, a constant questioning of what we think we know, an evaluation of what we have always believed to be facts, in the light of new knowledge and understanding. If you settle for anything less, you have no right to consider yourselves to be scientists.”
Ice Planet (Alive! Book 10) Page 10