Crescendo Of Fire

by Marc Stiegler

  Tom jumped in. “In ten days! They built a whole new pad in ten days! From scratch! In the middle of the goddam ocean!” Tom might have been famous for his collected calm, but sometimes events got the better of him anyway. He banged his fist against the desk. “What if he starts building the rockets out there too? Have you thought about that?”

  The Attorney General scoffed. “Stop trying to make out the BrainTrust as a bunch of evil super-magicians. Sure, they managed to build a launch pad. But you tell me, how much more complicated is it to build a rocket?”

  Tom looked mollified. A little bit. “Almost nothing made by humans is as complicated as a rocket.” He thought about it some more. “Even if they had the tools, which they don’t, where would they get the people with the experience needed to build them?”

  Once in San Diego, Matt had also hopped a plane to LAX, then took a scruffy rideshare driver down to the Pizza Show in Hawthorne. He walked in, slouched over as if he were a criminal trying to avoid being noticed for fear of capture. Which was, he thought, not all that far from the truth.

  The aromas of the Pizza Show were warm and soothing. The place, so they claimed, had not changed since the days when the Beach Boys came in for pizza when they were still in high school.

  Gary Schott sat at one of the red leather booths.

  Gary was a senior worker on the rocket assembly line. He’d grown up building washing machines on a similar line back in Ohio, where he’d started his career jamming the hose onto the output port of the pump once every fourteen and a half seconds.

  Since coming to SpaceR, he’d become one of the top utility infielders for rocket manufacturing. He’d learned just about every job, and if something went wrong or someone didn’t show up, he was the one who filled in, fixed it up, and made it happen.

  Gary was supremely competent, highly conscientious, and — the characteristic that best distinguished him in this situation — had considerable disdain for the union to which he belonged. He never got into physical or verbal battles with the diehard union members with whom he worked. When California had instituted the “card check” law for which the unions had lobbied so hard, which made every vote cast for/against unionization public, Gary had wisely voted for the union (unlike some of his more determinedly independent friends, whose accident rates on the job had mysteriously gone up after voting against the union). But Gary had been known, after a few beers, to observe among close friends that he would live better if he could disregard the union rules, focus on getting the job done, and keep his union dues in his retirement account, thank you very much.

  Gary’s chin was covered with salt-and-pepper stubble. He hadn’t shaved since the governor had put the whole factory on an enforced vacation. He looked somber, though a twinkle lurked in his eyes. He raised an eyebrow at Matt as he sat down. “Slumming, Mr. Toscano?”

  Matt shrugged. “I’m just Matt, Gary. I still remember you teaching me how the friction stir welding system works.”

  Gary nodded acknowledgment. “Good stuff. Good times.”

  “But every good technology gets replaced with something better, eventually. The next generation of Kestrel rockets is not going to need any welding.”

  Gary sat back against the plush booth back. “Really?”

  Matt nodded. “Would you like to learn some new skills? Or are you too old to learn any new tricks?”

  Gary smiled broadly. “I think I still have a few new tricks left in me.”

  “Good. Oh, there is another problem. Would you be OK with making more money?”

  For a moment Gary just stared at him. Then he flagged down a waitress. “Sounds like I should be celebrating. Can I buy you a beer?”

  Matt chuckled. “You buy the beer, I’ll buy the pizza.” The waitress arrived, and Matt asked, “Does the special pizza still have meatballs?”

  The waitress drawled, “Sure does, honey. Along with pepperoni, mushrooms, bell peppers, olives, and Italian sausage.”

  Matt looked at Gary. “Will a large pizza be enough for the two of us?”

  Gary ordered a pitcher, and the waitress left. Gary looked at Matt. “What’s the catch?”

  Matt winced. “You’ll have to move to the new factory. Housing space is a little cramped for the moment. At first, you’ll be sharing a room with three other workers. Even after we get everything shipshape, you won’t be living in the suburbs anymore. Your next residence should be thought of as a really tiny condo three minutes’ walk from the beach. And closer to the cafeteria, which has great seafood.”

  Gary pondered that. “Joyce would probably like that since both kids are in college. The kids won’t like losing the old home, but they’ll live with it.” He sighed. “So you’re moving the whole thing to the BrainTrust. I can’t say I’m surprised. The odds in the union betting pool are forty to sixty that you’d move the factory out there.” He smiled. “Looks like I’m on the winning end.”

  Dash walked into Chance’s office with puzzlement. “So what is it you need that is urgent yet so secret you will not tell me what it is until I can see you in person?” Dash was so focused on Chance she did not see anything else in the office until she heard a chair scraping. She turned to see who it was and frowned. Dmitri.

  Dmitri looked at her apologetically. “It’s my fault. I thought it best if we could arrange our meetings so that as few people as possible know that you’re trying to help me with my upcoming assassination. I haven’t even told my bodyguards.” He paused. “It would be ironic and terrible if the Premier decided to use something other than polonium to kill me because he learned that you’re working on a cure.”

  Dash raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I can see why extreme secrecy makes sense. And yet you seem to have taken Chance into your confidence.” She looked back at her intern. “Which is just as well, because I would very much like her help with the idea I have. I was going to ask you if I could bring her in on our project anyway.”

  Chance smiled an acknowledgment. “Thank you for trusting me, and believing in me.” Her smile took on a mischievous gleam. “But there’s another reason I wanted to see you in addition to Dmitri’s imminent death.” She swiped a finger across the screen of her tablet. “I want to give you money.”

  Dash stared at her.

  Dmitri chuckled. Chance joined him, then continued, “well, Dmitri and I both want to give you money. And it’s really Dmitri’s money when you get right down to it.”

  Dash’s own tablet beeped at her as the document Chance had flicked popped up. She studied it for a moment. “Custom Med Bays by Dash,” she muttered. “I am afraid to ask what this is.” She looked lower on the screen. “But whatever it is, you seem eager to give me a lot of money for it.”

  Dmitri roared with laughter. “So the med bay you forced me to put into the Buccaneer is magnificent. Not only is it wonderful, but it is wondrously expensive. I’ve been telling my other friends with mega-yachts about it, and they all want one. Except, of course, they want one that’s even better than mine.”

  Chance picked up the story. “So Dmitri came to me with a business proposition. He figured it would be hard to get you to sign up. And you have too much other work to do, anyway. Not the least of which is a saving Dmitri’s life. So I agreed to do the bulk of the design of the new med bays for these mega yachts.”

  Dmitri seemed eager to clarify. “You would get final sign-off authority, of course.” He winced. “But what we really need is your name as part of the company title.”

  Chance nodded vigorously. “You’re a brand now. The mega-yacht owners don’t just want a wonderful suite of medical gear. They want a suite of medical gear designed specifically by you.”

  Dmitri looked at her anxiously. “So, will you do it?”

  Dash rolled her eyes. “Do we not have more important things to worry about?” Both of the business partners looked at her anxiously, yet hopefully. She rolled her eyes again. “All right. Let me examine the terms of the agreement. But I expect I’ll agree.”

 
; Dash put her tablet in her pocket and looked meaningfully at Dmitri. “Meanwhile, as I explained in my message to you, I have the first part of the plan for dealing with polonium poisoning in place.” She reached into her other pocket and pulled out a bottle that rattled. It clearly contained pills. From the same pocket, she also pulled an electronic device. She held both out to Dmitri. “I was about to go looking for you, so I happen to have these with me.” She pulled up a chair and explained, “These pills contain a chelating agent, which is to say, a chemical that captures metal ions. I think I mentioned them before.”

  Dmitri grasped the bottle tightly, like it was his last hope for life, and nodded. “So if I take these regularly, when the polonium is injected, this will capture all those atoms so they can’t do any damage.”

  Dash winced. “Not quite. As I also mentioned earlier, this is quite toxic. If the Premier waits long enough to attempt to kill you, these pills will kill you for him.”

  Chance raised an eyebrow. “So I guess it’s extra-important for the Premier not to find out about this, lest he let you kill yourself on his behalf.”

  Dash frowned. “Just so. Unfortunately, there is more bad news.”

  Dmitri groaned. “It doesn’t stop, does it?”

  Dash plowed forward. “These pills, toxic as they are, will not save you. We can’t put enough of the chelating agent in your blood on a continuous basis to capture all the polonium. The goal, rather, is to capture enough of the polonium and excrete it in your urine so that we can reliably detect the radiation with that detector.” She pointed at the handheld she had given Dmitri along with the pills. “Then, within hours of when it’s been administered, we can rush you in for treatment.” She looked mournfully into Dmitri’s eyes. “A treatment that I am still working on. I know what must be done, and I am happy to have Chance working with me to build the machine we need.”

  Dmitri looked back and forth between the two of them. “So you’re going to build a new machine just for me?”

  Dash nodded. “Oh yes.” Her eyes brightened. “It will be quite expensive. I am so happy you are willing to pay for it.”

  Dmitri blinked. “Ah. Of course. How good of me.”

  Chance put her hands on his shoulders and squeezed. “Given what a rocky start we had, we all have such a wonderful relationship now, don’t you think?”

  Dennis was listening to Born to be Wild as he relaxed in the driver’s seat and watched his truck drive itself down I-40 across Arizona. He had a load of CPU chips straight from the Intel factory in Phoenix.

  Dennis was a very happy owner-operator. Less than a year before he’d plunked down just about everything he had to buy his own truck. The rise of the California minimum wage to thirty dollars an hour had opened up great opportunities for the small entrepreneur. Trucks driven by employees of large trucking companies in the Red states were seized upon entering California for the crime of not paying minimum wage.

  So virtually all goods were now shipped into California by independent truckers like himself. Since he was a business owner, not an employee, he was allowed to make less than minimum wage. The Teamsters Union in California had been lobbying to outlaw independent truckers ever since, claiming these small businesses were just regulatory evasions. However, the legislature, looking at the projections for the increased costs to the state’s own budget, had not yet relented.

  The road from Kingman to the California border was a seamless straight line across the desert, dotted with gnarly cholla cactus that looked, out of the corner of the eye, like skeletons on the parched earth.

  Dennis was pretty sure that twenty years earlier the sparse vegetation was a little thicker, a little more green. The scientists in the Blue states said it had changed because of global warming. The President for Life’s science advisor, speaking with the irrefutable scientific authority of a lawyer from the University of Tulsa College of Law, said that was ridiculous.

  Dennis didn’t know about that. He just knew that all things changed. Like the checkpoint on I-40 at the California border. When he’d first started making the trip, long before he’d bought his own truck, they had asked where he was coming from, just in case he was bringing oranges from Florida that might contain insects or diseases that might attack California’s own orchards. It had taken about eight seconds to roll through if you were coming from Phoenix.

  That was something that had really changed. Now every truck’s shipping manifest was scrutinized in minute detail. You were lucky to get through in an hour.

  Of course, it was worse coming the other way, entering Arizona from California. The Arizona border patrol didn’t care what you were shipping as long as you didn’t have any illegal immigrants mixed in with the cargo. But they were fanatic about checking every nook, even if the nook were so small only an illegal chihuahua would fit in the space.

  They were all nuts.

  Finally, the line of trucks trickled away until Dennis was next in line. Dennis rolled down the window. “Howdy, officer,” he offered as he handed over the manifest.

  The cop took the manifest without a word, his lips pressed in a thin line. Dennis wondered who’d poked a stick up this guy’s rear. That was another thing that had changed; long ago the cops had been friendly. Now more and more of them acted like this puckered jackass.

  As the cop studied the manifest, his lips got even thinner. “You’re carrying computer chips?”

  Dennis nodded. “From Phoenix.” In the old days coming from Phoenix was the ticket to getting back on the road. Not today.

  “And you’re taking the chips to…”

  Why was the guy asking questions that were answered by the paperwork? “San Francisco harbor. I guess they’re loading the container directly on a ship.”

  The cop plucked his phone off his belt and started describing Dennis’s cargo to someone he respectfully called “Sir.” Dennis started to sweat.

  The cop waved a couple other cops over. “Please step out of the vehicle.”

  Dennis’s heart jumped in his throat. As he opened the door, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

  The cop didn’t respond till he was out of his truck and the door was closed. Dennis looked forlornly at his semi. At last, the cop explained, “Your cargo is heading to the BrainTrust, for SpaceR. As you may have heard, the State of California is seizing all SpaceR assets. Your cargo is ours.”

  Dennis twisted his head so he could look at the paperwork. “But…the manifest says it’s going to Goldman Sachs, not SpaceR.” He thought desperately. “Don’t the Goldman Sachs guys have a whole ship full of compute servers out there? Looks like these chips are going to them.”

  The cop loomed over Dennis, clearly uninterested in his opinion. “The bosses say the chips are going to SpaceR. Don’t ask me how they know, I don’t know. But I know these chips are ours now.”

  Dennis licked his lips. “Okay. Can I drop the container off someplace for you?”

  The cop shook his head. “Your vehicle is carrying forbidden goods. It belongs to us too. Civil forfeiture. We’ll have someone come and take the truck in a few minutes.”

  Dennis couldn’t breathe. “But…it’s my truck. You can’t take my truck. It’s all I have, goddammit!” Dennis made the mistake of stepping closer to the cop with his fists closed. He was clubbed in the kidneys from behind. “You bastards!” he shrieked as he fell. So they clubbed him again.

  He spent the night in jail in Needles. In the morning they gave him a breakfast of reconstituted eggs and cold oatmeal. With no truck, no savings, no job, and unable to apply for welfare benefits since he was not a resident of the state, the jail breakfast was the best thing he would eat for several weeks.

  As Dennis ate his last breakfast in jail, Matt sat down to a more sumptuous repast at the cafeteria on board the Haven. Though calling the Haven dining area a cafeteria was a little like calling a diamond a chunk of coal. Plush carpets, suede booth benches and sound absorbing walls and ceilings made it quiet even when crowded. He’d chosen eggs b
enedict and started eating with a healthy appetite.

  Then he got a text message about Dennis’s truck. He enjoyed his breakfast little more than Dennis.

  Gina watched his expression change as he stopped eating and kept staring at the screen. “Trouble,” she said. A tiny movement in his shoulders told her the rest. “Governor.”

  “CPU chips,” Matt growled softly.

  Gina shrugged. “Dash.”

  He dialed the phone. “Hey, Dash, you’re not going to believe the problem we have now.”

  Dash offered Matt a chair in her office. “Sorry I could not come to Argus. I have a lot going on here on Chiron. Medical research, you know. Saving lives.” She continued with a sob, “Or not saving them. Yesterday I had a candidate for rejuvenation that I had to reject because it would probably kill him. He died anyway this morning.”

  Matt’s shoulders drooped. “I’m so sorry. I’d come back later, but…”

  “But you have an emergency. Of course. I must say, SpaceR has brought a level of constant urgency to the BrainTrust that is perhaps healthy, however irritating it may be.” She gestured for him to begin.

  “Computer chips. You know modern rocketry is very dependent on real-time computer control of just about every aspect of the engines and flight geometry.”

  Dash nodded.

  “The Great State of California has just snatched all the controller chips for the next gen Kestrels.”

  “I see.” Dash paused, thinking. “As you may know, the BrainTrust does indeed manufacture chips under license from Intel. But they are always a couple of generations behind the newest and best. Our chips are used primarily by people and organizations that are worried about being hacked. We strip out the circuits for the government’s backdoor.”

  Matt shook his head. “I’m not worried. Crazy as the California government is, even if the Reds in Washington were to give them access, I don’t think they’d sabotage our rockets just to get back at us. Even they would view that as uncivilized.” He thought about it. “Probably.”