The Winds of Altair

by Ben Bova

  "I don't want to return to Earth."

  "As my wife," he went on, ignoring her statement, "you would share my personal wealth, which is rather considerable. No matter what happens to me, you would be assured of enough money to return to Earth and live quite comfortably for the rest of your years."

  "I will not return to Earth!" Amanda sat up on the bed, sending waves undulating through it.

  "But why not?"

  "I left Earth behind me," Amanda said, almost fiercely. "I will never go back. Never!"

  He sighed. "You're painting yourself into a corner."

  "I don't care. I will not return to Earth, to the tribal wars and suicidal politics of that old world. Earth is where all my family is buried. I will not go back there."

  "But if you stay here . . ."

  She looked up at the stars. "I know. If we stay here we must transform the planet or eventually die."

  "There must be some other way, some better alternative."

  Amanda said nothing. For long moments Carbo could not speak, either.

  Finally, "But will you marry me?"

  She turned and looked down at him. "Even if we stay here?"

  "Yes. I love you. I want you to marry me."

  Amanda touched his cheek with her outstretched hand. "You foolish, wonderful man."

  "Will you?"

  "Of course I will."

  They kissed, long and lingering. Then Amanda broke into a giggle. "But do you think Bishop Foy will perform the ceremony for us?"

  Carbo laughed too. Soon enough, though, they grew silent as they lay side by side, gazing up at the stars. Carbo quoted softly:

  "Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain . . ."

  CHAPTER 26

  When Carbo awoke the next morning, he felt emotionally exhausted, heavy-spirited. Slowly he turned on the undulating waterbed, to find that Amanda was no longer there beside him.

  He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then pulled himself up to a sitting position as the bed rocked gently beneath him. Then he heard her voice singing, and he let himself breathe again.

  "Good morning," Amanda said as she came into the bedroom. She was fully dressed in a loose orange and brown caftan over a pair of dark form-fitting slacks.

  "You're damned cheerful." he grumbled.

  "Why not? There's no work to do. I got up early and checked with . . ."

  The phone buzzed. Carbo leaned across the bed and clicked it on, holding the bedclothes up to his chest with his other hand.

  Bishop Foy's face appeared in the tiny screen, white and drawn, his eyes bloodshot with sleeplessness.

  The Bishop grimaced with distaste as he saw that Carbo was still in bed. Amanda stayed at the bedroom doorway, out of the phone's line of sight.

  "You haven't tried to get into the contact laboratory this morning, I see," said the Bishop.

  "I . . . uh, I overslept." Carbo suddenly felt as if he were being confronted by his Jesuit disciplinarian again.

  "Well, get down there as fast as you can and see if you can talk some sense into Holman and the rest of those rebels. If you can't, there's going to be real trouble. I promise you that! Real trouble!"

  The screen went blank.

  Carbo blinked his gummy eyes and turned to Amanda.

  "I was just about to tell you," she said, a strange smile on her lips. "Jeff and the other students have taken over the contact lab. They won't let anyone else in."

  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Carbo gasped.

  Jeff fought down the temptation for the twentieth time. Sitting in the flimsy wheeled chair in front of the control console, he could see the couch—his couch—where he could be in contact with Crown within minutes.

  But we've all agreed there will be no more contact work, he told himself. Not even to see how Crown is getting along. Nobody touches any of this equipment. No matter what the Bishop says or does, we stay here and keep them from using this equipment and killing Windsong.

  Still, he itched to be linked up to the equipment, to make contact with Crown, to be a wolfcat leading a whole clan down on the surface of that world.

  He shook his head, as if to clear it of such temptation. I've done a lot better for Crown than I have for myself, he told himself ruefully.

  "Jeff." Laura's voice broke him out of his thoughts.

  He swivelled the creaking chair to face her. "Dr. Carbo's here. He'd like to speak with you."

  "Good." Jeff got to his feet and went with Laura to the reception area where the offices and the main exit to the outer corridor were.

  Amanda was with Carbo, looking more beautiful than ever. The scientist himself seemed disheveled, as if he had dressed very quickly. His jawline was dark, stubbly.

  "It's all right," Jeff said to the four students who were standing guard at the corridor door. "They can come in."

  Jeff led Carbo and Amanda to Carbo's own office, an unkempt cubbyhole at the end of the row of offices. Carbo's eyes took in everything: the students lounging at the reception desk, the others posted at the entrance to the lab area.

  "You've really taken over the place," he said as Jeff opened the office door.

  "We haven't harmed anything," Jeff said. "We just want to make certain that no one uses the equipment."

  Carbo gestured Amanda into the office, then stepped in himself. Jeff and Laura followed. The office was cramped and littered with cassettes of data tapes, book spools, recording tablets.

  "May I?" Carbo asked, pointing to the padded chair behind the desk.

  "It's your office," Jeff said.

  He went around the desk and sat down. Amanda took the chair beside the desk. Laura and Jeff squeezed together on the half-sized couch facing it.

  "I didn't know if you'd let me in," Carbo said.

  "You stood with us last night, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but I'm not sure that I agree with this move—taking over my lab."

  "I thought about it all night," Jeff said. "It's the only way we can prevent Bishop Foy from forcing the work to continue."

  "And it's the only way we can make him listen to us," Laura added.

  Amanda said, "You're going to force him to do something drastic."

  "That can't be helped," Jeff said. "He can try to starve us out, prevent other students from bringing food to us."

  "Or he can use police powers to muscle you out," Carbo said.

  "He'd have to have the Elders agree to the use of physical force," Jeff said.

  "Since when have the Elders said no to him?"

  Jeff admitted, "You're right. But he'd have to recruit the police from among the students. I don't think they'd attack us. And even if they did, we'd destroy this equipment before they were able to overcome us."

  Carbo threw his hands up. "Jesu, what talk! Destroy the equipment."

  Leaning forward, placing his hands on his knees and staring straight into Carbo's eyes, Jeff said, "We are determined to prevent the annihilation of the living creatures of Windsong—Altair VI."

  "But there's got to be a better way than blowing up the lab," Carbo argued.

  "I wish I knew one."

  Glancing up at the ceiling and the curving wall of the office, Amanda said slowly, "You know, if I were Foy, I wouldn't try to use force against you students. I would just evacuate the rest of this dome, leave you here sitting in the lab, and then turn off your air."

  For a moment no one spoke; the only sound in the room was the electrical hum of the air blowers.

  "Once we realized he'd done that," Jeff said at last, "we would still have time to wreck the equipment."

  "Not if he just opened all the vents in this dome," Amanda said, "and let the whole dome decompress. You'd all be dead inside of a few minutes."

  Laura shuddere
d. "He wouldn't do that."

  "Maybe," Amanda said.

  "Whether he would or not is unimportant," Carbo said impatiently.

  "Unimportant?"

  "Maybe to you," Jeff said.

  Carbo waggled his hand at them. "Listen, my friends. I am here. I will stay here with you. I made that decision last night in the Tabernacle. We are in this together, to the very end."

  Jeff felt his breath catch in his chest. "Do you mean that?"

  "Of course. We live or die together, and in the long run, whether we live or die is not important."

  Amanda made a sour face at him.

  "No, hear me out. What is important is that world down below us, and those colonists on their way here. We must find some way to save them both. So far, the way we have been going, we can only save one at the expense of the other. How can we save them both?"

  Jeff shook his head. "I've been trying to figure that one out for months now."

  "Either we destroy Altair VI and turn it into a habitable planet for the colonists," Amanda said, "or we leave the planet alone and let the colonists die in their ship."

  "But they can live in that ship for a long time," Laura pointed out. "For years, can't they?"

  "Yes," Carbo agreed. "But not indefinitely. The ship's supplies are limited. Its recycling equipment won't last forever."

  "We're in the same boat," Jeff muttered.

  "This is no time for a pun," said Amanda, grinning. Jeff shot her a puzzled frown.

  "But I don't understand," Laura said, "why we can't live in the Village indefinitely. Can't we convert some of the domes into farms and grow our own food? I mean, the colonists must be bringing seed stocks and frozen livestock embryos, aren't they?"

  Jeff turned in the couch to look at her. "You might as well talk about building an O'Neill colony."

  "Well, why not?" Laura asked brightly.

  "Because," Carbo explained, "O'Neill colonies are incredibly expensive to build. Only the very richest corporations on Earth can afford them. And once they're built, only the richest people on Earth—or the corporations' employees—are allowed to live in them."

  But Laura would not be deterred. "You say we need an alternative to lay before Bishop Foy. You say we need a solution that will save both Altair VI and the colonists. So why not build an O'Neill colony here in space? It could be big enough to be a habitat for a million people or more, and it could be built to be just like Earth inside: Earth-type air, gravity, temperatures, everything!"

  "It would cost hundreds of billions," Carbo insisted. "It would take years to build it."

  "But it would take years to transform Altair VI, wouldn't it?"

  "And it wouldn't cost hundreds of billions," Jeff said slowly, "because we don't use money here."

  Carbo grumbled, "You know what I meant . . ."

  "Yes," Jeff said. "You mean that we can't afford to build an O'Neill colony. But why not? What makes you think we're so poor?"

  "We . . ." Carbo stopped abruptly, and stroked his chin as if lost in thought over this new idea.

  Jeff said, with growing enthusiasm, "We have energy, a constant flood of energy here in orbit from Altair itself. We have raw materials from Altair's asteroid belt—the same raw materials we used to build the oxygen plants. We have a core of trained, dedicated workers right here in the Village."

  "We would need thousands more workers," Carbo said.

  "They're on their way," Jeff countered. "The colonists."

  "But those people aren't engineers or managers. They're the poor scum of a dozen Asian cities, scooped up off the streets."

  Amanda reached out and put a hand gently on Carbo's arm. "Frank, you were poor scum scooped off the streets, once."

  His jaw dropped open. With a visible effort, he regained control of himself.

  "Yes, that's right," he said softly. "But it took almost twenty years of discipline and education to turn me into a scientist."

  "And you invented a device that telescopes that twenty years into—what, twenty months? Twenty weeks?"

  "The neuro probe?"

  Amanda nodded. "It could be the greatest educational tool in human history, Frank. If it's used properly."

  "The colonists are already implanted with them," Jeff said.

  "We could use them to train those people," Laura added. "Educate them. Turn them into . . ."

  "No," Carbo snapped. "I won't use the probes to force people into shapes they don't wish to be."

  "But what makes you think they want to be poor and ignorant?" Amanda demanded. "They'd jump at the chance to learn, to change their lives."

  "Not all of them would."

  "Then to hell with those who refuse!" Jeff snapped. "They're the real dregs and they'll be nothing but trouble no matter what we or anybody else does for them."

  "But most of them will work with us," Amanda insisted. "Most of them will join us and help us to build."

  "An O'Neill colony," Laura echoed.

  "More than one," Jeff said. "Five of them, twenty, a hundred. Who needs to destroy an existing world when we can build brand-new ones, exactly fit for human habitation?"

  For the first time, Carbo smiled. "You're crazy, all of you."

  "Yes, of course," Jeff agreed. "But it will work. We can make it work."

  Carbo looked at each of their faces in turn: Amanda, Laura, and Jeff. Then he reached across his desk and flicked on the phone. "Bishop Foy, please. Tell him it's urgent . . . and it's good news."

  CHAPTER 27

  Bishop Foy scowled at them as he sat behind his broad, massive desk.

  "But how would we become land holders of an artificial colony built in space?" he demanded. "Our contract with the world government gives us title to the land of Altair VI and nothing else. Certainly we couldn't claim ownership of an O'Neill colony."

  "That's right," answered Jeff. He sat in front of the Bishop's desk, with Laura on one side of him, Amanda and Dr. Carbo on the other. It had taken two full days before the Bishop would agree to meet with them. Foy had insisted that the students disband their occupation of the contact lab. They had refused. Reluctantly, Foy had finally allowed them to come to his office for a face-to-face confrontation.

  "We won't own the colony," Carbo agreed. "It will belong jointly to all of us—including the colonists."

  Foy grimaced. His jaws worked as if he were grinding his teeth, but he said nothing.

  "I know what you're thinking," Carbo said, a soft smile lighting his swarthy face. "I am prepared to donate my personal fortune to the project. I burn my bridges behind me, just as you and all the others have been forced to do. We build this colony together and we build it to last for many, many lifetimes."

  Amanda reached toward him and put her hand on his. "None of us will become rich," she said.

  "Except in God's grace," Laura added.

  The Bishop's face twitched. His hands began to tremble. "You . . ." His voice cracked as he visibly struggled to control himself.

  "Reverend Bishop," Jeff said, as politely as he could, "we put it to a vote among the students. They have overwhelmingly approved this plan."

  Carbo added, "The scientists, too. And the social technicians."

  "It is not the students' prerogative," Foy said stiffly, "to decide such matters. Nor that of the scientists and social technicians whom the Church employs. Only the Elders . . ."

  "The Elders may vote as you instruct them to," said Jeff. "But the scientists and the students will not continue the attempt to transform Altair VI. If necessary, we will send a message back to the Mother Church to ask for a new Council of Elders and a new Bishop."

  "That's unheard of!" Foy snapped.

  Jeff shrugged slightly. "So is building a new world."

  The Bishop's face grew crafty. "All communications back to Earth must be approved by me."

  "You're not saying that you'd interfere . . ." Laura's shocked voice halted in mid-sentence. Her face showed that she understood the Bishop's meaning quite clearly.
/>   Jeff's hands tightened on the arms of his chair. Glaring at the Bishop, he asked softly, "Will you force us to take complete control of the Village? The comm center, all the domes? Must we lock you in your quarters?"

  "That's mutiny!"

  Carbo got to his feet and spread his arms, as if trying to separate the two of them. "Wait. Wait. Before we begin to say things that we will regret later, let us admit that we are at impasse."

  "What good will that do?" Amanda asked.

  "The colony ship is due to take up orbit in a few days. Let us agree to a truce until then. No further work on the surface of the planet. The students will go back to their own domes." Eying the Bishop, Carbo went on, "And we will all pray for guidance until we have a chance to meet the colonists and see what condition they are in."

  Foy shook his head. "I don't see what good that will do."

  "Frankly, neither do I," Carbo admitted cheerfully. "But it's better than fighting. Perhaps the students and the Elders can use the time to meet with each other and discuss the situation."

  Understanding dawned in Amanda's dark eyes, Carbo saw. She understands what I am trying to do, he thought to himself. The students can persuade the Elders to be more flexible than Foy would allow. We can undermine his position, given a few days' time.

  But the Bishop was still adamant when the massive colony ship established itself in orbit a precise hundred kilometers behind the Village. They circled Altair VI as if linked by an invisible thread.

  Captain Gunnerson and his family had brought the colony ship to Altair, and now he carried Foy, Jeff, and Carbo in a cramped shuttle rocket from the Village to the huge collection of domes that was the colony ship.

  "Her name's the Ghandi," Gunnerson said, leaning back in his pilot's chair and puffing great clouds of blue smoke from his pipe.

  The tobacco smelled awful to Jeff, and he could see that the Bishop's nose wrinkled in undisguised disgust at Gunnerson's filthy habit. Carbo, however, seemed to take some perverse pleasure in every sniff.

  The three of them were sitting strapped into contoured chairs, like astronauts of old, because this shuttle used old-fashioned rocket thrusters rather than the gravity drive that propelled the bigger ships among the stars.