by Adam Roberts
The redheaded man takes the thum and slots it into an expensive lookiŋ screen. Images pour out upon it, and Hope slips into his lecture, the familiar words settliŋ into their familiar grooves. As he speaks them they assume hypertext transcendence in his memory, each sentence overlaid with specific images from his decade-and-a-half of floggiŋ this shit all over Europe and the Uplands. He remembers sittiŋ in uncomfortable pepperwood chairs in some ancient buildiŋ in Eŋland-EU, or presentiŋ before the polished steel tables of a Romanian corporation, or floatiŋ in larger but far seedier Upland rooms than this-amulti-billionaire called József in a green-painted pod-shaped house; a consortium of extremely wealthy breakaway Catholics and their Pope (one of 14 rival Popes) in a spare 7-room mansion; tryiŋ to present to an ancient man called Ustinov, whose skin cancers were beyond even pharmakos, and who had expressed interest but turned out only to want to reminisce about Gradi; or a dozen other occasions when piquant aspiration had soured to disappointment in the space of half an hour.
‘Mercury is a world we know little about, even in the 22nd century - even as we start to spread through the solar system’ (which is a reference, of course, to the American base on Mars, as if that means anything) ‘we still pay Mercury no attention. Yet it’s a fascinatiŋ world. Its diameter of 4 thousand and 80 kilometres’ (all the facts and figures are right there, they haven’t gone away) ‘is a little over a third of Earth’s, so it’s small. At 3 point 3 times 10-to-th’-23 kilos, its mass is only 5 per cent of Earth’s, so it’s really very small. But do you know wat the surface gravity is?’
Look expectantly at your audience. Replies tend to vary from polite do tell to how-the-fuk-would-I? Malet only raises one eyebrow.
‘Nearly half Earth’s gravity!’ says Hope. ‘Point 4 gee. Point 4! The Moon is pretty much the same size and only pulls point 1 6 gee. Mercury’s density is very close to Earth’s, 5 and a half grams per cubic centimetre. Do you know why?’
‘I feel you will tell me,’ says Malet. He is bored. Hope needs to ratchet it up.
‘The inner planets are roky worlds,’ says Hope, speakiŋ more rapidly. ‘Roky mantles with iron cores, like the Earth. Some iron from the core has got mixed in little ripples through the rok, for instance in the Earth, which is wat miners dig out, but most of it is far below, inaxessible, in the core. But Mercury - Mercury is pretty much all iron. All iron! Nobody knows why; but the roky mantle has been almost entirely shuked off. It may have been a catastrophic collision that knoked it all away, or maybe it’s been blown off by the solar wind - the pressure of that is pretty intense that close to our system’s lighthouse bulb.’ Now, when Malet is lookiŋ his most bored, now the killer. ‘Mr Malet, it’s the greatest concentration of iron in the solar system. It’s the most enormous resource, the most stupendous natural resource. And for the person prepared to — ’
‘Yes,’ says Malet, and for a moment Hope thinks the great man is agreeiŋ with him, so he surges on: ‘and here, in the Uplands, is a land cryiŋ out for that resource, limitless iron to build houses, planes, superstructures, billionaires happy to pay you to provide the materials with which the Uplands can be transformed . . .’
But Malet says ‘Yes,’ again, and Hope understands that it was punctuation, a full stop, not encouragement. So he stops.
Malet appears to be thinkiŋ about it. His Indian (or Pakistani, or Bangladeshi, or Kashmiri, or Independent Republic of Mumbaian, or watever he is) assistant shifts himself through the air, bringiŋ his mouth close to his master’s ear.
‘Right, Mr Gradisil,’ says Malet, and Hope does not correct him. ‘I’ll tell you the problem I have. You say, move the iron here, in bulk, a planet-sized lump of it, sell it to the Uplanders for ambitious Upland construction projects,’ he holds out his right hand, turns it over, turns it bak up, a dumb-show for and so on, et cetera, kai ta loipa, ‘fine. Here’s an investment niggle I have: those projects are the sorts of things governments buy. I don’t mean to insult your nation, Mr Gradisil — ’
‘My nation?’ interjects Hope. ‘Ah but Mr Malet, wat is my nation? Is it a — ?’
Malet waves this aside. ‘But I don’t see that the Uplands have that kind of government. There’s government of a sort here, sure, a very loose, chimerical government, 2 or 3 prominent people squabbliŋ over who gets to be called the official heir of your mother. But there’s not a public works department, you know? A taxation system whose revenues could be . . .’
Hope feels the sale slippiŋ from him. A rekless sense of abandonment comes to him. Interrupt the big guy, why not? ‘I’m goiŋ to stop you there,’ he says, tryiŋ to judge the proper level of loudness. Malet’s eyebrows slide up his brow; not used to beiŋ interrupted. ‘I don’t think you’re gettiŋ me, Mr Malet,’ says Hope, firmly. ‘You’re right about the rhizomatic nature of governance in this land. If this were the 55th state of the USA then I’d probably be pitchiŋ to a government department in the first place. But it isn’t. This is about free enterprise; and wat I’m offeriŋ is a focus, a premise, for a massive engineeriŋ feat that will do more than bring a saleable resource into this territory. Much more.’
Malet breathes in, breathes out, waves his hand in front of his mouth to dissipate the gas. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s the moving of Mercury, as much as the seizure of this enormous lump of saleable iron - it’s the moving, Mr Malet, that is the attraction for an investor such as yourself. It’s gainiŋ a leverage share in the idea, the technology. It’s makiŋ you a master of the universe. It’s so that future generations will look bak,’ (he’s extemporisiŋ now, but the spirit is in him, he feels on fire, the words all flow) ‘history will look bak and say, Malet! he reached out his arm and laid his right hand upon a planet and moved it. That’s wat we’re talkiŋ about. The resource - yes, that’ll offset the initial investment, that’ll set up a 20-year timetable for retrieviŋ the initial money, after which it’s all profit. But that’s not the half of it.’
Everybody in the room is lookiŋ at him. Is this wat his mother used to feel, addressiŋ little cadres of followers in hurtliŋ tinpot rooms in the early days of the republic? It’s a rare feeliŋ for Hope, an addictive one.
‘Yes,’ says Malet, and this time it’s a prompt. Hope pulls a bigger breath into his lungs, and sets about explaining how he will lay an arc of wing over the sunny side of the planet, and how that will move the world, the whole of the world.
‘The actual arc,’ says Hope.
‘Arc?’
‘The arc of wingfront, on the sunny side of the world. The arc need not be the full 24-hundred kilometres of daytime planetary stretch. About half of that area, a little under 14-hundred kilometres, would be laid; and even then the installation would be a dotted line: 5 hundred metres of front, and a gap of about the same, repeated over and over.’
‘So 7 hundred klims. Still a long stretch of - wat is it? Cable?’
‘It’s not the cable that’ll be the expense,’ says Hope. ‘We can use regular cable, spool it up, fly it there, unspool it. It’ll need a ceramic sheath, or it’ll simply melt in those temperatures, but that’s not the expense either. I mean, it’ll melt anyway, but it’ll retain conductivity inside the sheath. The problem is the one and a half thousand generators, each of which will need to be heavily shielded and heat-resistant, and fitted in place. That’s where the project takes on,’ he searches for the right word. ‘Takes on epic dimensions.’ He is startiŋ to feel tired; haviŋ passed over the little hump of excitement, and after last night’s lak of sleep, but he pushes himself on, summons a little more sparkle. ‘But it’s doable.’
The Indian assistant interjects: ‘How do we get the materials down to . . . ?’ The question hangs.
‘It’s all part of the development strategy,’ says Hope. ‘Every feature has been planned. Gettiŋ there isn’t hard, it’s downhill all the way there after all. We’ve planned a kind of solar parachute, to guide the descent into Mercury orbit.’
‘Also quan?’
‘Ever
ything is quan.’
‘And the US military are . . . ?’
Hope peps up again; this is an important point. ‘It’s old technology now; it’s half a century old - more. Now it’s perfectly true that the US have, that your government have developed newer more efficient forms of quantum wingfront, and that’s top secret. But the basic principle, and the original models, these have been public domain for a long time. We don’t need the most up-to-date model for wat we’re proposiŋ. It’s not the nuance we’re lookiŋ for, it’s the brute, the brute force of it. Listen: this is a world that is beiŋ continually blasted by the most intense solar wind in the system. It’s already the most ion-scarred world in - all we need to do, really, is nudge it a little, a little push with the wingfront and it will shift. We’ll be pushiŋ it uphill, but it’d be like helpiŋ - imagine a baseball sittiŋ on top of a powerful fan, the fan is blowiŋ but just with not quite enuff force to lift the ball, and all we’re doiŋ is fixiŋ a thread and giviŋ it the littlest . . . of hoiks . . . or a better way of thinkiŋ would be, we’re fittiŋ a peak to the ball, adaptiŋ the ball into an aerodynamic shape that . . .’
They’re all still lookiŋ at him; they’re all still interested. This is startiŋ - he cannot dare hope, but - this is startiŋ to look possible.
‘At the moment,’ he says, ‘all this immensely valuable resource is stuk in the least hospitable place in the solar system, pressed against the ragiŋ-hot cheek of the sun itself. We can reach down and pull it up here. You can, Mr Malet. You can do this.’ It’s close. He can almost feel the money pouriŋ from Malet and into the project. 15 years!
Malet breathes in again, breathes out. ‘And these parachutes . . . ?’
‘The? Oh, ah, that’s just the — ’
‘Tell me about them.’
He thinks. ‘They’re not the most significant detail of the . . .’
‘Mr Gradisil,’ says Malet. ‘Let me tell you about myself. Let me tell you about the vision I had.’
Vision is good. Hope feels the mood is positive enuff for him to try this: ‘That’s why I came to you, Mr Malet, because you are a man of vision. It’s no secret that I have tried to raise funds for this project amongst Uplanders, and it’s no secret that they’ve been too blinkered to see through to the possibilities. But you, Mr Malet, you’re the first non-Uplander I’ve approached, and it’s precisely because you have vision.’
Malet, who listens patiently to all this, says: ‘I don’t mean that kind of vision.’
Oh.
Something is wrong here.
Hope keeps the anxiety off his face, inclines his head, ‘I’m sorry, I misunderstood.’
‘I’m not a mystic, Mr Gradisil,’ says Malet. ‘I don’t believe in God. But I have had a vision. Venus, Mr Gradisil. Venus.’
‘The planet?’
He doesn’t dignify this with a response, but instead says: ‘You’ve told me some interestiŋ things about Mercury, things I didn’t know. Let me repay the compliment, with some facts about Venus. Same size and density as Earth, a little closer into the sun, a hell-world. Temperature varies from a minimum of 2-hundred-30 Kelvin to 7-hundred-and-77 Kelvin. The average temperature is 737. The atmosphere is 96 per cent carbon dioxide. The clouds are made of sulphur dioxide. Sulphuric acid falls as rain. At ground level there’s no wind, whereas the cloudtops are ripped by winds of 3-hundred-50 miles an hour.’ He’s relishiŋ this account of Dis. He’s grinniŋ. ‘Now there are volcanoes on Venus, spewiŋ CO 2 into the atmosphere, but this is a world entirely without tectonic activity. Tell me, Mr Gradisil, how can this be? How can you have volcanoes without tectonic activity?’
Wat on earth is this guy talkiŋ about? Hope says: ‘I don’t know.’
‘Very well, here’s another question. A million years ago Venus was like a steamier version of Earth. There were oceans. There was plenty of genetically-mutatiŋ sunshine and radiation. There must have been life.’
‘OK,’ says Gradisil. ‘I’ll confess I’m not sure I see where this is goiŋ.’
‘So my second question is how did we get from there to here? From Eden to Hell?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No. I didn’t know either, and I didn’t care. I made my fortune in tradiŋ and developiŋ pharmakos. My horizon was the human body. Then I had my vision. Never before in my life, and not since, has this happened to me. Something communicated with me - I don’t know, exactly, how. I certainly don’t know why. But they did.’
‘They?’
‘Venusians.’
Malet says this with so straight a face that Hope, lookiŋ intently at him, decides not to laugh, even a warm we’re-all-in-the-joke laugh. Can he really believe this? ‘I’m afraid,’ he says cautiously, ‘Mr Malet, that I don’t - quite — ’
‘It’s a lot to swallow I know,’ says Malet, blithely. ‘But understand this, Mr Gradisil. I’m not askiŋ you to follow me, or even to believe me. You only need to understand that, haviŋ spent 3 decades only makiŋ money, I am now driven to move sunwards. The American government isn’t interested; they think there’s nothing on Venus to interest them, nothing but hell. But I know - better — ’
This is terrible. Hope can feel that his smile has become fixed and unconvinciŋ, but - fuk. He had no idea. There’s really no end to the madness of the very rich. This guy is clearly not goiŋ to sink his billions into MM. This meetiŋ is a dead end, just a chance for him to rehearse his craziness in front of a blinkiŋ, grinniŋ audience.
‘One thing I would say,’ Malet is goiŋ on. ‘It doesn’t need a vision to realise this truth.’
‘Truth?’
‘That there must be aliens, Venusians.’
‘Must be?’
‘The volcanoes are not volcanoes, they’re heat transference portals. That’s why they’re arranged so regularly, and how they’ve come into beiŋ without tectonic activity.’
‘Transferriŋ heat from?’
‘The interior of the planet, of course. Increased solar radiation, abundant water, life must have evolved quiker on Venus, must have reached sentience, intelligence, much earlier than on Earth. They’re ahead of us. They abandoned the surface of their world - who knows why. Pollution, natural disaster, some other reason. It doesn’t really matter. They went underground. They constructed this enormous series of vents to transfer heat from the centre of their world up and away, to make their underground kingdom liveable, the ideal temperature. They’ve been doiŋ this for as long as - who knows how long? But it’s turned the surface of their world into hell. But they don’t care about the surface, they’ve perfected their society underneath the surface. Wat other explanation is there?’
He has stopped. Wat to say? ‘It’s an interestiŋ,’ Hope says. ‘An interestiŋ — ’
Malet smiles very broadly. ‘Mr Gradisil,’ he says, ‘please do not be alarmed. And do not be self-conscious. One advantage in beiŋ as wealthy as I am is that you need no longer care wat people think of you. You, for instance, are thinkiŋ that I am a little insane. I don’t care wat you think. And wat’s more, Mr Gradisil, you shouldn’t be thinkiŋ that. You should be thinkiŋ will he fund my project? That’s all.’
‘That is indeed wat I am thinkiŋ, Mr Malet. That’s why I’m here.’
‘I am interested in your ideas for quantum parachutes to negotiate the steep downhill towards the sun. And I’m interested in your plan to move an entire world.’
Hope breathes in. On the wall, the screen is still cycliŋ its images and charts.
‘Well, Mr Gradisil,’ says Malet. ‘I’ll tell you. I will present your case to my management board. I shall present your case - positively.’
Hope takes in a breath, and releases it. He didn’t see that comiŋ. ‘That’s excellent news,’ he says, stunned. Then, with more feeliŋ, ‘That’s excellent news - you’re goiŋ to fund the project?’
‘I am very interested in your project Mr Gradisil. It seems to me to be financially plausible. It seems to me a high-profile project that can only e
nhance the reputation of my company. And perhaps more importantly, it seems to me an opportunity for engineeriŋ on a planetary scale - something to impress the Venusians. They have already achieved this level of engineeriŋ capability. We need to show them that we are on a level with them before we make contact.’
Hope has the strenuous sensation of blood pumpiŋ in his skull, sketchiŋ a coil-shape. His skin is serratiŋ into goosebumps all over.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Malet, can I just confirm . . . ?’
‘You’ve done it, Mr Gradisil,’ booms Malet, throwiŋ his arms wide. ‘You’ve convinced me. You’ve done it.’
five
His head is still slightly swollen with excess blood from arrival in the Uplands, which makes it hard for him to distinguish between the physiological and the metaphysical sense of cranial enlargement. Fifteen years of disappointment, the shatteriŋ of his entire fortune, the loss of the 3 partners who had first proposed the idea until he stood alone, the ridicule of his friends, even of his brother - and now, at the last gasp, the project is to be funded. It is to come off. Hope cannot believe it. He tingles with an undescribable thrill.