by Mercury(lit)
Then the Earth's climate tumbled over the greenhouse cliff. After half a century of warnings from climatologists that were ignored by temporizing politicians and ridiculed by disbelieving pundits, the global climate abruptly switched from postglacial to the kind of semi-tropical environment that had ruled the Earth in earlier eons. Icecaps melted. Sea levels rose by twenty meters over a few years. Coastal cities everywhere were flooded. The electrical power grid that sustained modern civilization collapsed. Killer storms raged while farmlands eroded into dust. Hundreds of millions of men, women, and children were driven from their homes, their jobs, their lives, all of them hungry, frightened, desperate.
The New Morality rejoiced. "This is the wrath of God that has been called down upon us!" thundered the Reverend Harold Carnaby. "This is our just punishment for generations of sinful licentiousness."
Governments across the world turned authoritarian, backed by fundamentalist organizations such as the Holy Disciples in Europe and the Flower Dragon in the Far East. Even the fractious Moslems came together under the banner of the Sword of Islam once Israel was obliterated.
After decades of authoritarian rule, however, people all across the Earth were growing restive. The climate had stabilized, although once again scientists were issuing dire warnings, this time of a coming Ice Age. They were ignored once again as the average family moved toward economic well-being and a better life. Prosperity was creeping across the world once more. Church attendance was slipping.
Carnaby, now a self-appointed archbishop, mulled these factors in his mind as he sat in his powered wheelchair and gazed out across the skyline of Atlanta's high-rise towers.
"We saved this city," he grumbled.
"Yes, sir," said one of the aides standing behind him respectfully. "We surely did."
"We saved the nation when it was sinking into crime and depravity," Carnaby added. "Now that the people are growing richer, they're turning away from God. They're more interested in buying the latest virtual reality games than in saving their souls."
"Too true," said the second aide.
Carnaby pivoted his wheelchair to face them. They were standing before his desk, arms at their sides, eyes focused on the archbishop.
"Sir, about the medical report..."
"I'm not interested in saving my mortal body," Carnaby said, frowning up at them through his dead-white eyebrows.
"But you must, sir! The Movement needs your guidance, your leadership!"
"I'm ready to meet my Maker whenever He calls me."
The one aide glanced at the other, obviously seeking support. The two of them were as alike as peas in a pod in their dark suits and starched white shirts. Carnaby wondered if they were twins.
"Sir," said the other one, his voice slightly deeper than his companion's, "the physicians are unanimous in their diagnosis. You must accept a heart implant. Otherwise..." He left the conclusion unspoken.
"Put a man-made pump into my chest and remove the heart that God gave me? Never!"
"No, sir, that isn't it at all. It's merely a booster pump, an auxiliary device to assist your heart. Your natural heart will be untouched," the deeper-voiced aide coaxed. "It's really rather minor surgery, sir. They insert it through an artery in the thigh."
"They won't open my chest?"
"No, sir," both aides said in chorus.
Carnaby huffed. He had accepted other medical devices. One day, he'd been told, he would have to get artificial kidneys. Ninety-two years old, he told himself, and I've never taken a rejuvenation treatment. Not many my age can say that. God is watching over me.
"An auxiliary pump, is it?"
"Yes, sir."
"You need it, sir. With all the burdens of work and the pressures you face every day, it's a miracle that your heart has lasted this long without assistance."
Carnaby huffed again to make sure that they understood that he didn't like the idea. But then he lowered his head and said humbly, "God's will be done."
The aides scampered out of his office, delighted that he had acquiesced, and more than a little awed at the archbishop's willingness to sacrifice his obvious distaste of medical procedures for the good of the Movement.
Alone at his desk, Carnaby called up the latest computer figures on church attendance. The New Morality was officially a nonsectarian organization. The bar graph that sprang up on his smart wall screen showed attendance reports for nearly every denomination in North and South America. The numbers were down-not by much, but the trend was clear. Even the Catholics were falling away from God.
His desktop intercom chimed. "Deacon Gillette calling, Archbishop," said the phone's angel-sweet voice. "Urgent."
"Urgent? What's so urgent?"
The phone remained silent for a moment, then repeated, "Deacon Gillette calling-"
"All right," Carnaby interrupted the synthesized voice, irked at its limited abilities. "Put him through."
Gillette's face replaced the attendance statistics. He was an African-American, his skin so dark it seemed to shine as if he were perspiring. His deepset brown eyes always looked wary, as if he expected some enemy to spring upon him.
"Deacon," said Carnaby, by way of greeting.
"Archbishop. I've received a disturbing report from our man in Ecuador."
"We have a man in Ecuador?"
"At the skytower project, sir," said Gillette.
"Ah, yes. A disturbing report, you say?"
"According to Rev. Danvers, the scientists of the skytower project are using a form of nanotechnology to build their structure."
"Nanotechnololgy!" Carnaby felt a pang of alarm. "Nanomachines are outlawed, even in South America."
Gillette closed his heavy-lidded eyes briefly, then explained, "They are not using nanomachines, exactly. Instead, they have developed genetically engineered viruses to work as nanomachines would, assembling the structural components of their tower."
Carnaby felt the cords at the back of his neck tense and knew he would soon be suffering a headache.
"Tell Danvers to notify the authorities down there."
"What they're doing is not illegal, Archbishop. They're using natural creatures, not artificial machines."
"But you said these creatures have been genetically engineered, didn't you?"
"Genetic engineering is not outlawed, sir," Gillette replied, then quickly added, "Unfortunately."
Carnaby sucked in a breath. "Then what can we do about it?"
With a sad shake of his head, Gillette answered, "I don't know, sir. I was hoping that you would think of a solution."
Fumbling for the oxygen mask in the compartment built into the wheelchair's side, Carnaby groused, "All right, let me think about it." He abruptly cut the phone connection and his wall returned to its underlying restful shade of pastel blue.
Carnaby held the plastic mask over his face for several silent moments. The flow of cool oxygen eased the tension that was racking his body.
Sudden thunder shook the building, startling Carnaby so badly that he dropped his oxygen mask. Then he realized it was another of those damnable rockets taking off from the old Hartsfield Airport.
He spun his chair to the window once again and craned his dewlapped neck, but there was nothing to see. No trail of smoke. No pillar of fire. The rockets used some kind of clean fuel: hydrogen, he'd been told. Doesn't hurt the environment.
He slumped back in his wheelchair, feeling old and tired. I've spent my life trying to save their souls. I've rescued them from sin and the palpable wrath of God. And what do they do as soon as things begin to go smoothly again? They complain about our strict laws. They want more freedom, more license to grow fat and prosperous and sinful.
Then he looked out at the empty sky again. They're getting richer because those rockets are bringing in metals and stuff from the asteroids. And they've built those infernal solar satellites up in orbit to beam electrical power to the ground.
Those space people. Scientists and engineers. Godless secularists
, all of 'em. Poking around on other worlds. Claiming they've found living creatures. Contradicting Genesis every chance they get.
And now, Carnaby thought, those space people are building a high-tech Tower of Babel. They're going to make it easier to get into space, easier to make money out there. And using nanotechnology to do it. Devil's tools. Evil, through and through.
They're building their blasphemous tower in South America someplace, right in the middle of all those Catholics.
They've got to be stopped, Carnaby told himself, clenching his blue-veined hands into bony fists. But how? How?
RIDING THE ELEVATOR
"How high are we?" Lara asked, her eyes wide with excitement.
Bracknell glanced at the readout screen set next to the elevator's double doors, where Victor Molina was standing. "Eighty-two kilometers, no, now it's eighty-three."
"I don't feel anything," she said. "No sense of motion at all."
For nearly a month Bracknell had resisted Lara's pleas for a ride in the space elevator. The instant he had told her the first elevator tube had completed all its tests and was officially operational, she had begged him for a ride. Bracknell had temporized, delayed, tried to put her off. To his surprise, he found that he was worried about the elevator's safety. All these years I've drafted the plans, laid out the schematics, overseen the construction, he castigated himself, and when we get right down to it, I don't trust my own work. Not with Lara's life. I'm afraid to let her ride the elevator.
That realization stunned him. All the number crunching, all the tests, and I don't trust my own work. I'm willing to let others ride the elevator, I'm even willing to ride it myself, but when it comes to Lara-I'm afraid. Superstition, pure and simple, he told himself. Yet he found excuses to keep her from his skytower.
The elevator worked fine, day after day, week after week, hauling technicians and cargo up to the stations at the various levels of the tower. Bracknell's confidence in the system grew, and Lara's importunings did not abate. If anything, she became even more insistent.
"You've been up and down a dozen times," she whispered to him as they lay together in the shadows of their darkened bedroom, her head on his naked chest. "It's not fair for you to keep me from going with you. Just once, at least."
Despite his inner tension, he grinned in the darkness. "It's not fair? You're starting to sound like a kid arguing with his parents."
"Was I whining?" she asked.
"No," he had to admit. "I've never heard you whine."
She lay silent for several moments. He could feel her breathing slowly, rhythmically, as she lay against him.
"Okay," he heard himself say. "We'll go up to the LEO deck," he conceded.
Lara knew the Low Earth Orbit station was five hundred kilometers up. Her elation was immediately tinged with disappointment.
"Not all the way?" she asked. "Not to the geostationary level?"
Bracknell shook his head. "That's up on the edge of the Van Allen Belt radiation. The crew hasn't installed the shielding yet. They work up there in armored suits."
"But if they-"
"No," he said firmly, grasping her bare shoulders. "Some day we're going to have children. I'm not exposing you to a high-radiation environment, even in a shielded spacesuit."
He sensed her smiling at him. "The ultimate argument," she said. "It's for the good of our unborn children."
"Well, it is."
"Yes dear," she teased. Then she kissed him.
They made love slowly, languorously. Afterward, as they lay spent and sticky in their sweaty sheets, Bracknell thought: This is the real test. Do you trust your work enough to risk her life on it?
And Lara understood: He worries about me so. He lets others ride the elevator but he's worried about me.
The next day was a Sunday, and although a full team of technicians was at work, as usual, Bracknell walked over to the operations office and told the woman on duty there that he and Lara would be riding up to the LEO platform.
The operations chief that Sunday morning was a portly woman who wore her ash-blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun, and a square gold ring on her left middle finger.
"I'll tell Jakosky," she said, grinning. "He's won the lottery."
"What lottery?" Bracknell asked, surprised.
"We've been making book about when you'd let your lady take a ride up," said the operations chief. "Jackpot's up to damn near a thousand Yankee dollars."
Bracknell grinned weakly to cover his surprise and a pang of embarrassment. As he left the building and started back up toward his quarters, he saw Molina coming down the street, heading toward him. Victor's going to be leaving, Bracknell knew. Going to Australia to start a new career in astrobiology. And he's sore at me for not letting him publish the work he's done here.
"Hello, Victor," he called as the biologist neared. He knew that Molina despised being called Vic.
"Hi, Mance," Molina replied, without slowing his pace.
Bracknell grasped his arm, stopping him. "Lara and I are riding up to the LEO deck. Want to come with us?"
Molina's eyes widened. "You're taking her up?"
"Just to the lowest level."
"But the safety certification..."
"Came through a week ago. For the LEO platform."
"Oh."
"Come with us," Bracknell urged. "You're not doing anything vital this morning, are you?"
Molina stiffened. "I'm finishing up my final report."
"You can do that later. You don't want to head off to Australia without riding in the tower you helped to build, do you? Come on with us."
With a shake of his head, Molina said, "No, I've got so much to do before I leave..."
Bracknell teased, "You're not scared, are you?"
"Scared? Hell no!"
"Then come on along. The three of us. Like old times."
"Like old times," Molina echoed, his face grim.
Bracknell knew that he himself was frightened, a little. If we bring Victor along I'll have him to talk to, to keep me from worrying about Lara's safety. But he knew that was an excuse. Superstition again: nothing bad will happen if it isn't just Lara and me riding the tube.
Molina, who hadn't been alone with Lara since he'd confessed that he was in love with her, allowed Bracknell to turn him around and lead him back to their apartment building. What the fuck, he said to himself. This may be the last time I see her.
"It's like we're standing still," Lara said as the elevator rose smoothly past the hundred-kilometer mark.
"Like Einstein's old thought experiment about the equivalence of gravity and acceleration," Bracknell said.
The elevator cab was big enough to handle freight and new enough to still look sparkling and shiny. An upholstered bench ran along its rear wall, but Lara and the two men remained standing. The walls and floor of the cab were buckyball sheets, hard as diamond but not as brittle, coated with scuff-resistant epoxy. The ceiling was a grill-work through which Lara could see the shining inner walls of the tube speeding smoothly by.
No cables, she knew. No pulleys or reels like an ordinary elevator. The entire tube was a vertical electric rail gun; the elevator cab was being lifted by electromagnetic forces, like a particle in a physics lab's accelerator or a payload launched off the Moon by an electric mass driver. Pretty slow for a bullet, Lara thought, but they were accelerating all the way up to the halfway point, where they would start decelerating until the cab braked to a stop at the LEO level.
Molina stayed tensely silent. He hadn't said more than two words to either of them since Lara had joined them for this brief trip into space.
LEO PLATFORM
"You should have windows," Lara said as she walked to the bench along the cab's rear wall and sat down. "It's boring without a view."
Bracknell sat beside her and glanced at his wristwatch. "Another twenty minutes."
Molina had not spoken a word since they'd boarded the elevator, more than a half hour earlier. He remained s
tanding, pecking away at his palmcomp.
"You need a window," Lara repeated. "The view would be spectacular."
"If you didn't get nauseous watching the Earth fall away from you. Some people are afraid of glass elevators in hotels, you know."
"They wouldn't have to look," Lara replied primly. "I think the view would be a marvelous attraction, especially for tourists."
Conceding her point with a nod, Bracknell said, "We'll be adding several more elevator tubes. I'll look into the possibilities of glassing in at least one of them."