The Titicaca Effect

by Richard N. Tooker

  “Roger,” Segurola answered. “I’m ready to fire thrusters now and put some distance between us and the thruster frame.”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  The telemetry feed displayed at the front of the control room indicated that the spacecraft’s aft thrusters had fired for less then two seconds, and the scrolling numbers indicated that Condor Two was moving away from the thruster frame at about six feet per minute, a perfect burn for the situation.

  “Nice work, Pancho, Looks like you’re clear.”

  “Roger, Titicaca. We can see the thruster frame behind us. Firing again.”

  The telemetry feed showed that the second, longer burn had increased the separation speed by another 22 feet per minute. At this rate, ground control could fire the remaining thrusters on the frame to push it into an uncontrolled reentry that would burn it up in the earth’s atmosphere within another ten minutes. The astronauts in Condor Two, meanwhile, busied themselves stowing gear and getting the spacecraft ready for descent into the planned near-earth circumnavigation of the globe.

  Freeman called the president, then left the control room to brief the waiting reporters.

  The rest of the flight, which had only narrowly missed being a repeat of the disastrous attempt to launch Condor One, was textbook-perfect. Even though the near-earth orbit was cut short, there was still time to broadcast a split-screen interview between the astronauts and President Maldonado, who used the opportunity to once again plug the rich heritage and ethnic diversity of Bolivia and its people. He also drew some striking parallels between the flight of Condor Two and the grandeur of the country’s history. The president was clearly on a mission to elevate Bolivia as a travel destination for experience-seeking tourists.

  A few hours later, Freeman and Stout took a helicopter back to El Alto to wait for the return of Condor Two. At Maldonado’s invitation, they joined him in the presidential reviewing stand positioned to be the first to greet the astronauts when they emerged from the spacecraft.

  The landing went flawlessly. Condor Two’s planned descent flight path took it directly between the airport at El Alto and Illimani, the Andean peak that dominated the skyline in La Paz, so that photos of the spacecraft coming in for a landing would be framed by the spectacular mountain in the background. The visual effect in the real-time TV images and in the follow-up photos was stunning.

  When Condor Two touched down there was near-pandemonium in every village and settlement in the Andes with access to television, including those in Chile, Paraguay and Peru. The historically-downtrodden Aymara, in particular, saw the flight as an indication that their centuries of suffering at the hands of Europeans were finally at an end, and proof that their people were destined once again for the greatness that had been taken away from them centuries earlier.

  A new space age had begun.

  Chapter 23: Into Space

  Even before the successful flight of Condor Two, plans had begun firming up for a whole series of construction projects in space, from small, special purpose laboratories to a spectacularly large permanent space station – so large, in fact, that when it was completed it would very likely be visible from the earth’s surface at night, even at more than 22,000 miles high. Freeman had even cut a deal with Hilton to put the ultimate luxury hotel into geosynchronous orbit over the spaceport. The corporation had never lost sight of the fact that the orbiting hotel in 2001: A Space Odyssey had been a Hilton, and they simply couldn’t pass up the chance to fulfill the prophesy of that venerable piece of fiction.

  The myriad orbital construction plans were driven by the fact that for the first time since mankind had ventured off-planet, the amount of weight and mass that had to be lifted into orbit were not a concern, making it possible to use commonplace and inexpensive construction materials in whatever quantities were needed. Reinforced concrete and steel could be used in place of lightweight and prohibitively expensive composites and exotic metals. In addition, the necessities of human habitation – air, water and food – could be placed into orbit in vast quantities. The economics of space travel had changed, and as long as the Titicaca Effect continued to provide a daily opportunity to reach orbit, the change would be permanent.

  To Tyler Freeman, there was a kind of poetic justice in the fact that one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere had suddenly become a very important place, and he took considerable pride in the fact that he had made a personal contribution to that transformation. His friendship with Alberto Maldonado continued to grow, and Freeman was determined to do what he could to help make the president’s five-year term one that would set Bolivia on a course that would assure the country’s future.

  There was much to be done to make that happen.

  From the beginning, Freeman had been troubled by Manco Capac and the indigenous mountain people that he represented, and he felt that Capac’s grievances represented legitimate unfinished business that the Bolivian government would have to deal with sooner or later. He lobbied Maldonado to confront the issue proactively, finally convincing the president to meet with Capac again to try to reach an accord that would address the real economic and social needs of the Indians. To his credit, Maldonado, who had initially wanted no part of the idea, managed to keep an open mind about Capac and his cause. After only three meetings the two men managed to develop a healthy respect for each other, and Maldonado began to see that there was a valid point to Capac’s position. The original Andeans, like the original North Americans, had suffered terribly at the hands of their European conquerors, who had simply stolen their land. In Bolivia’s case, it had begun with the subjugation of the Incas by Pizzaro, and had continued unabated until the entire continent had changed hands.

  The Spaniards’ attempt to destroy the culture of the Indians, however, had failed. Even the Catholic church, which eventually came to dominate all of Central and South America, was forced to adapt. To this day, the ceremonies and symbolism used in the cathedrals and churches in the Andes have been corrupted to include elements of rituals handed down from the Incas. In the main cathedral in Cusco, there is a very famous painting of the last supper in which Christ and the disciples dine on guinea pig, a staple of the Peruvian diet.

  Maldonado understood, and he acted. The land reforms that had been enacted in the 1950s giving the Indians property rights were expanded dramatically by presidential decree. Thousands of acres of prime real estate in the fertile lowland jungle of the Jungas held by the Bolivian government – not just the hardscrabble property on the altiplano that was almost impossible to farm – were turned over to the interior ministry to distribute among the Indians. The move caused some problems in the form of a land rush that had various activist groups squabbling over who had the right to determine which individuals would receive the parcels of property. To a limited degree, the interior ministry had to deal with the same problem that had plagued the bureau of Indian affairs in the United States when American Indian tribes began building casinos; the promise of easy money motivated citizens who had heretofore claimed to be of 100 percent European heritage to discover that their family tree had aboriginal roots. Thousands of Bolivians claimed to be Meztisos, descendants of family lines created when Spanish soldiers, sent to the new world without their wives, had taken Aymara women to their beds. Suddenly, being of mixed heritage became a blessing instead of a curse.

  More importantly, Maldonado had instructed Freeman to make a place for Capac himself to serve on the board of directors of the spaceport, and to implement an affirmative action program that would employ Bolivians of Indian descent at the facility. Voluntarily, Freeman enacted similar rules for his own company’s operations in Bolivia.

  Freeholdings, Inc. was making Freeman a very rich man. In the first six months of operations after the successful flight of Condor Two, the spaceport generated licensing revenues of more than a billion dollars, in addition to another $300 million in operational revenues from the twice-weekly launches that quickly became routine. Th
at revenue was over and above the $212 million that had been committed in the first round of bidding. The company’s share of all this money, at 2%, was more than $25 million. Thaddeus Stout, a partner in the firm, was entitled by contract to 20% of that revenue, plus all the profits generated by the zero-G laboratories that were now fully operational around the perimeter of the launch area.

  Stout had also partnered with Crillon Tours, the Miami operator of the most popular tours in Bolivia and Peru, to create a four-star restaurant called “Sea Level” on the Island of the Sun, less than three miles away from the spaceport. It was a seafood restaurant, of course, but one with a twist. Through an ingenious series of unobtrusive airlocks designed by Stout, restaurant patrons passed through three museum-like displays of Andean cultural artifacts that Crillon had relocated from its resort at Huatajata, on their way to the restaurant’s interior. By the time diners reached the dining room, the ambient air pressure had been increased to sea level, a welcome relief from the rigors of high-altitude breathing for visitors who had not yet had time to acclimate. Wildly popular from the day it opened, the restaurant was booked solid for weeks in advance. Crillon, with financing from Feeholdings, Inc, had also broken ground on a similarly pressurized hotel next door to the restaurant. The tour operator had commitments from the governments and corporations that were sending people to the spaceport regularly that would keep the hotel at 90%-plus occupancy for years.

  Given the fact that they were beneficiaries of a very generous business arrangement given to them by the president of Bolivia, both men felt a strong obligation to use their new-found wealth in ways that would benefit the Bolivian people. With Alicia’s help, Freeman established an accelerated-curriculum school in the city of El Alto to select and educate the best and brightest among the underprivileged children who lived there. The idea was to create change that would be both lasting and far-reaching. Hopefully, generations yet unborn would benefit from the life tools that these children were being given. He also funded the startup of a non-profit organization that would seek to raise money to provide low-income housing to the people of that city who were being displaced as more and more real estate around the airport was given over to commercial development.

  Stout founded a department of space sciences at the national university in La Paz, and recruited “name” professors from the U.S. and Russia to develop the curriculum and teach. The school would turn out engineers and other scientists who could be employed by the Bolivian Space Commission and the spaceport, with the goal of reducing foreign involvement in the space program.

  Time magazine featured Maldonado in a cover story titled “The Titicaca Effect,” using the term normally associated with the antigravity phenomenon itself to describe the impact it was having on Bolivia, on South America, and on the rest of the world. Time predicted, correctly, that having such a valuable natural resource would create both problems and opportunities for Bolivia, and that whether or not the country would be able to capitalize on such good fortune was almost entirely in the hands of a single individual – Alberto Maldonado.

  Less than five months later, the magazine named the president its “Person of the Year,” citing his skill in developing the country’s unique new natural resource along with his demonstrated ability to successfully manage the intense political pressures created by that resource. A sidebar story about the American who had helped the Bolivian chief executive navigate the treacherous waters of international diplomacy made Freeman a minor celebrity as well.

  Bolivia was changing rapidly. The spaceport was a huge commercial enterprise and it was attracting major players. An entire infrastructure had to be built around the lake to handle the thousands of business people, government dignitaries, scientists and tourists that began streaming into the area. Maldonado was adamant that the influx would have zero environmental impact on the lake. Businesses that located facilities near the spaceport – which included most of the world’s major corporations – had to agree to some of the most stringent regulations ever formulated to keep the lake water pristine and to make certain that the Andean culture that had persisted in the area for centuries remained intact.

  American fast-food chains continued to be barred from the area. Copacabana and most of the altiplano were designated a historical preserve, and except for selected areas on the roads that led to and from the spaceport, no construction was allowed. This forced the requisite office buildings required by the corporations and governments into La Paz, creating a boom in commercial development that made the city one of the fastest-growing in the hemisphere.

  The Island of the Sun, less than three miles across the water from the spaceport, could easily have been consumed by development, but Maldonado had insisted that the impact of the nearby spaceport be minimized as much as possible. There were no vehicles of any kind on the 20-mile-long island, and residents still moved goods and services on the backs of llamas and burros. For the most part, the people on the island lived much as their ancestors had for hundreds of years, which made the island a popular tourism destination even before the spaceport was built. Of course, the new influx of visitors made business very good for the children who sold native trinkets to the tourists.

  Early on, Maldonado had instituted a clean-up campaign that had rid the city of El Alto and the roads through the altiplano of the tons of trash that had accumulated over a span of decades. He also launched an educational campaign (in conjunction with stiff fines and relentless pressure from the local Policia) to break the natives of their habit of discarding refuse along the roadsides. The altiplano was turned into some of the cleanest real estate in South America.

  It was impossible, of course, to maintain the Island of the Moon, and to a lesser degree the Island of the Sun, in their natural state. The Island of the Moon was less than two miles long and a quarter-mile wide, which was barely enough room to hold the spaceport. The entire island had been given over to commercial development, except for the Incan ruins on the terraced hillside near the hydrofoil docks that comprised an area less than 75 square yards. The archeological site was left in the open, surrounded by an attractive fence, landscaped and complemented by the addition of a small museum that described the island’s place in history as the birthplace of the Inca. Manco Capac himself, a purported descendant of the original Manco Capac who had been sent to the lake by the sun to found the original Empire of the Incas, was asked to dedicate the museum. It was a brilliant move that earned Maldonado a serious measure of political capital with natives throughout the Andes.

  In less than a year, decades-old Bolivian government deficits had been completely wiped out by spaceport licensing fees and the taxes generated from all this activity, with future revenue streams assured that would soon make the country among the most prosperous in the world. The Titicaca Effect was an enormous resource not unlike the vast oil fields in the middle east, with two significant differences; the resource was completely renewable, and it would forever be without competition of any kind.

  Bolivia had been invited to join the G-8 economic conference along with the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Japan, Russia, Italy and Canada (thus making it the G-9 economic conference going forward), and had accepted. The Organization of American States let it be known that as soon as Maldonado’s five-year term as president was over, it wanted him to become its new secretary general, replacing the former president of Colombia, who was retiring. By law, Maldonado could not run for president again and succeed himself, although he could skip a term and run again if he wanted to. Most people thought he would.

  The Republic of Bolivia, once one of the poorest and least important countries in the world, had become a world power.

  * * *

  Two years to the day after the flight of Condor Two, Tyler Freeman and his new wife, the former Alicia Montoya, sat at the dining table in their suite in the orbiting Hilton Universe Hotel. The room service captain had just left the suite after arranging a dinner of Titicaca lake trout, fresh vegetabl
es and flan for dessert on the table. Beneath them, the South American continent glowed orange in the waning light of a spectacular sunset visible through a huge, lens-quality tempered glass window. The suite was on the outer edge of the gigantic, wheel-like rotating structure, which created artificial gravity that was slightly over half earth-normal. Because of the slow rotation of the structure, the view of the earth would soon change to a spectacular unobstructed starfield, more detailed and brilliant than any ever seen from the planet below. That would be followed by a view of the shuttle operations center, where the fleet of eight spacecraft were unloaded after exiting the antigravity field which continued to establish itself exactly on time daily.

  The spacecraft, of course, were used to return people to earth. They were not needed for every orbital insertion. When the huge crates of building materials came up, they were usually controlled by a two-man crew who served only as backup for the automated thruster controls that kept the cargo aligned in the pipe, and those two men would make the trip in a disposable pod that provided short-term life support. After helping to move the cargo to its final destination, they would be picked up by inter-orbital shuttles and billeted in the same housing used by the construction crews until they could catch a ride on one of the returning spacecraft.