A Tower in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #5)

by Laurence Dahners

  He thought, It’s as if Seba were dancing! He moved with such… grace. He hit our man a blow that managed to look flowing and stylish yet must have packed a wallop from the way the guy folded. Then Seba looks like he’s taking him down in some kind of wrestling hold, but it appears to me as if a big part of what he was doing was cushioning the guy’s head so it wouldn’t hit the ground so hard. Then Seba checked his own six. He saw the woman had taken the other man out of action, so he patted his officer down, got out the man’s own handcuffs, and restrained him… He made it all look like one long smooth movement… one without a single false start, hitch, or even the tiniest bit of clumsiness.

  They couldn’t have choreographed it better for the movies… though in a movie there’d have been a lot more back and forth to add drama.

  Willis shook his head, Got to stop admiring the performance and decide what to do next. He turned to Brent. “So, your guys are in custody?”

  Brent nodded unhappily.

  “We’ve got no handle on this missing IP?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Is this admiral going to figure it out without getting our people back?”

  “That, sir, I do not know. From what I’ve heard, he is not. But others would know the situation there better than I do.”

  Willis stood and started pacing. He turned to his aide, “Get this admiral on the line so I can talk to him.” He turned back to Brent. “Is there any way we’d be able to snatch Seba from the Italians?”

  Brent looked sour, “I doubt it. We don’t know where Seba is, but if they’ve put him in protective custody it’d be even harder to get him out now. And this time there’d be a major international incident instead of the little kerfuffle we’ve got now.”

  The president stopped his pacing to put a hand on Brent’s shoulder. “Arlo, in my opinion, this is already a major international incident. I know you were trying to keep from bothering me about something minor, but Staze is hardly minor. My economic advisers tell me it’s going to be a major driver of the world’s economy for decades. I think you had a colossal lapse in judgment, not just in ordering those actions, but in not realizing it was something you should talk to me about. You should recognize that when I talk to “il Presidente,” I may well need to soothe the waters by telling him I fired you for going off the rails. Understand?”

  Brent sighed, “Yes, sir.”

  After finishing with Brent, Willis talked to Admiral Halser. He decided the man was a blowhard who wouldn’t be able to find his own ass if the lights were on, there were written directions, he had help, and he used both hands.

  He confirmed Staze’s importance with his economic team.

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed Stade’s military potential with him.

  He got his science adviser to explain what stazing might mean to scientific progress, then sat back stunned as he considered. Sure, the medical implications were astonishing, but stockpiling food to deal with droughts? Nuclear fusion for unlimited power? Access to space on an unprecedented scale? Safe, radiation-free travel to the asteroids and other planets, with the astronauts in stasis, so they aren’t so damned bored and don’t eat all their food? Travel to other stars in stasis?

  How could I have been unaware of all this? I should’ve been supporting Staze a long time ago. The moment I heard there was a bill to nationalize the company I should’ve been all over it!

  Disappointed in himself for letting this phenomenon get so far out ahead of him, he told his aide to put him through to the President of the Republic of Italy. He sighed, thinking, I’m gonna have to eat a lot of crow and pray we can get back a bit of what we so casually threw away.

  His phone’s AI said, “Here’s your call from Presidente Mattioli.”

  Willis said, “Presidente Mattioli?”

  He heard Mattioli’s voice respond heartily in excellent English, “President Willis. How are you today? I’m thinking you’re probably somewhat dyspeptic?”

  “Yes, Presidente. I’m afraid some of my people took too much upon themselves.”

  “Ah yes. It’s a hard line to walk, isn’t it? Do I bother the President about this one, or decide it myself?” Mattioli sighed. “If only my people got that right more of the time.”

  Willis chuckled; very glad Mattioli was taking it jovially, rather than busting his cajones over it. He said, “And, if only they made their decisions on my behalf with the benefits of the kind of hindsight I have at the time I’m criticizing them for what they did.”

  Mattioli laughed. “Agreed! Now, on to our problem. It would seem that a couple of officers of your Central Intelligence Agency took it upon themselves to capture a couple of Italian citizens in Florence? We, of course, will be happy to turn the officers back over to you so that you might discourage such brashness in the future.”

  “Yes…?” Willis said, trying not to sound suspicious, but waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Well now,” Mattioli said cheerfully, “I assume you’re aware that these two citizens of Italy are also citizens of the United States?”

  “I am.”

  “And that they’ve been founding an Italian version of your stazing industry. Amazing stuff that. It’s going to change the world! We, of course, are very glad to have it here so we can get in on the ground floor, so to speak. I’m sure America didn’t want to keep such amazing technology to itself and is quite glad to see it spreading to Europe.”

  Willis consciously unclenched his jaw and tried to speak pleasantly, yet noncommittally. “Yes, the benefits to the world will be enormous.”

  “Now,” Mattioli said, as if revealing a confidence, “from what our new citizens have told me, they’ve been very upset by the nationalization of Staze in the U.S. It’s important to recognize that they feel the benefits of Staze belong to the world and its military uses should be limited to those of a defensive nature. They also object to the way a certain admiral was put in charge and seems only to be concerned with limiting the applications of this technology to your country and to sequestering military uses of it for your own armed services.”

  “He is an… overbearing individual,” Willis allowed.

  “So,” Mattioli said brightly, “if I might make a suggestion?”

  Despite his irritation at being—in a sense—lectured to, Willis said, “Certainly.”

  “Call Kaem Seba. Talk to him. See what you can negotiate. The company wants to make Staze work in the U.S. too. They just need you to make that nationalization thing go away. Then America can enjoy the benefits of stasis again, the way Italy’s just beginning to.”

  That was not what Willis had expected at all. He said, “Um… Thanks for the suggestion. Do you know how I’d reach him?”

  Mattioli chuckled, “His phone number hasn’t changed. If your phone identifies itself, he’ll answer. Or, I could ask him to call you, if you have a number he can call that won’t reject his attempt.”

  “I’ll try calling him. Thanks. Um…”

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind.”

  Once the call was disconnected, Willis asked his aide to find a phone number for Seba and took another call.

  When that was done, he asked her to put the call to Seba through.

  He was still pondering how to handle the conversation when his earbud said, “Kaem Seba is on the line.”

  Willis said, “Mr. Seba?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. Thank you for reaching out to us.”

  “You’re welcome. I regret not doing it earlier. Is there any way for me to speak to your owner/CEO?”

  “Um, no, but he listens in on important conversations such as this one and guides my replies. You can speak to me as if you were talking to him.”

  “Okay,” Willis sighed. “Though I wasn’t involved in the decision to take the nationalization of Staze before Congress, I did sign the legislation because it seemed reasonable to make sure that this technology couldn’t fall into the hands of our enemies. Assuming you’re loyal
citizens of our country, I’m not sure why you objected so strongly to the installation of federal supervision intended to prevent such an event? So strongly that almost all your top people resigned and left the country?”

  “I’m sorry sir,” Seba said. “The precipitous nature of our departure probably had a good deal to do with the hostile manner in which Admiral Halser inserted himself and his team into that supervisory position. But, also, we believe this technology and its incredible benefits belong to the world as a whole. It’s our contention that advances like these should not be restricted to any one place. That they should not perpetuate the worldwide inequalities that contribute so significantly to unrest. It may not be obvious on first consideration, but Stade does not make a good offensive weapon. It’s much better suited to protection and defense. Therefore, we do not believe it should be restricted unless someone finds a way to make an offensive weapon out of it.”

  “I take your point on the admiral,” the President said. “He will soon find himself out of a job. However, I beg to disagree on the military issue. My advisers point out that if, say Italy, suddenly had unsinkable warships, it wouldn’t matter that their offensive capabilities would be no stronger, other navies could not stand against them.”

  “Ah, but consider, sir, that every ship in the world, from the largest tanker, to frivolous cruise ships and yachts, right down to the meanest rowboat… they all should have Stade hulls and thus be unsinkable. Would you take that safety from all people merely so our military should have an advantage in wartime? Should not all aircraft be indestructible? Should they not all be outfitted with systems to staze their passengers in case of a crash?”

  Willis blinked, wondering why he hadn’t considered those issues. “Stade hulls won’t be too expensive for civilian use?”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  “What about the fact that Stade munitions would easily penetrate the armor on a tank?”

  “Not if the tank’s armor was Stade sir. And if a Stade projectile did penetrate a current tank’s armor, it wouldn’t be hot, wouldn’t spall into fragments, and wouldn’t do as much damage as current tungsten or depleted uranium munitions.”

  The President blinked at that, not sure whether it was true but unable to argue the point. He jumped tracks. “I had understood that all space launch would eventually migrate to Virginia, but now I hear you’re building a launcher on Italy’s eastern coast. Is that just out of pique?”

  “Well… we might have implied it would all come to Virginia back when we were negotiating with the governor for his help in putting up the first tower on the coast there. However, it’s always been our intent to improve international travel by installing launchers on at least every continent. That way travel and eventually shipments from any one place to another will be much faster and far cheaper—”

  “What?!”

  Patiently, Seba explained how a space tower could launch a Stade spaceplane with a payload greater than that of the venerable Boeing 787, for a lower cost than that of a full load of fuel for the jet. Depending on the velocity and angle it was launched at, it could send the plane—much like a cannon could fire something—so it would arrive anywhere in the world, gliding down to a minimal fuel expenditure landing in less than two hours. He explained that initially, he envisioned feeder jets bringing passengers to a launcher on each continent, but that eventually, each country might have its own tower because they just weren’t that expensive to put up.

  “But, wouldn’t they be able to launch stuff into space from them?!”

  “Yes, sir. Any tower could also launch to space,” Seba acknowledged.

  “Wait! You just likened a launcher to a cannon. What if they just started slinging rocks at countries they didn’t like?!”

  “Well,” Seba said slowly, “at those speeds, rocks would burn up while passing through the atmosphere. Projectiles capable of tolerating the heat, say tungsten or Stade, would tend to punch small holes in whatever they hit, rather than exploding and doing a lot of damage. However, I take your point. We’ll need to establish systems in the launch software to look out for such attempts and shut down the launcher.”

  “If all those countries start launching stuff, isn’t the problem of junk overcrowding low Earth orbit going to become more and more of an issue?”

  “That is certainly a concern. But with all launch being carried out by Staze’s launchers, the company will be able to elicit, establish, and insist that launchers follow a set of rules for acceptable altitudes for each of the different orbital trajectories and ensure that no one launches into other paths. Any satellite launched by Staze will be required to carry a rocket engine capable of deorbiting it at the end of its useful life. In addition, Staze is committed to charging enough for orbital launches to pay for a cleanup system that will deorbit the current swath of space junk.”

  “So…” Willis hesitated, then said, “you intend then for Staze to become the policeman of orbital space?”

  “No, but we will be in a position to refuse to launch materials into unacceptable orbits. Also, we plan to refuse to launch weapon systems.”

  “And if they launch something with enough fuel to change its orbit to one you deem unacceptable?”

  “At a minimum,” Seba responded, “we would no longer launch for that entity. If deemed necessary we’d deorbit that satellite.”

  “You’ve been saying, ‘Deorbit.’ By that do you mean shoot them down?”

  “Oh, no. Shooting results in fragmentation of a satellite and that just produces more, smaller debris. Instead, we’d attach a rocket engine to the errant satellite that would decelerate it enough to drop it out of orbit where it would burn up in the atmosphere.”

  “And…” Willis realized he was dreading the answer he would get, but it must be asked. “What of the orbital weapon systems of your own country? Will you launch those?”

  “No, sir,” Seba said.

  “Staze, the tyrants of the spaceways, huh?”

  “Benevolent tyrants, sir.”

  “This may be all well and good while someone as ethical as… as you assume and we hope Mr. X is… while he’s at the helm,” the President said. “But what happens when he steps down and someone who isn’t a benevolent tyrant takes over?”

  “That’s certainly a concern. Something that needs to be addressed at some point in the future. Perhaps by establishment or cooptation of an international body such as the United Nations.”

  “I think… that if you believe that will work, you’re overly idealistic.”

  Seba laughed. “You’re probably right. It’s simply human nature to try to game the system. Perhaps a single idealist would be appropriate? Should we put the Dali Lama in charge?” Seba sighed, “Unfortunately, then someone would game the idealist… Mr. President, we cannot pretend to have a long-term solution. We have an answer for the short term and we hope that a longer-term method might be found at some point in the future. By then, hopefully, we’ll know more about the potentials and jeopardies of this technology.”

  After some negotiation, Willis arranged the return of Staze to the U.S. Such a return was to begin upon the repeal of the congressional bill that had authorized the nationalization. That repeal would have to include a measure agreeing not to pressure Staze to create offensive weaponry. Willis himself agreed to grant a blanket pardon against any charges that may have been filed—or might yet be filed—against Staze’s employees in an effort to force them to return to the States, or give up IP, or cooperate more fully with the nationalization order.

  To Willis’ surprise, X didn’t try to negotiate a tax break and did have Seba agree that they would begin casting Stade hulls for the American Navy before they stazed warships for other countries.

  When all was said and done, Willis felt wrung out, yet satisfied with the results of his efforts. But I’ve still got all of my afternoon appointments to deal with, and I’ve got to get Congress started on that repeal. He sighed and turned to his aide. “I’ve got a bunch of
stuff for you to do. Better have someone else come help me for the rest of the day.”

  Epilogue

  Kaem disconnected his call and turned to Arya, “I’m so sorry.” He turned to the door of the restaurant and pulled it open for her.

  She said, “Wait. Who was that you were talking to?”

  “Um… President Willis.” Kaem smiled happily, “He agreed to pretty much everything we wanted. Staze’ll be able to go back to the States pretty soon.”

  Arya snorted, “Did you just apologize for making me wait while you talked to the President of the United States?”

  “Um…” Kaem looked as if he might be worried about what the right answer would be. “Yes…?” he said hesitantly.

  Arya mock-punched his shoulder, “It’s okay to make me wait a few minutes while you talk to the leader of the free world.”

  “Thank you for your forbearance,” he said with a smile and a mock bow. “I still apologize for making you wait.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Arya threw her arms around him. “I love you!”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, you knucklehead! Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Um, not to me. What about all those other guys you’ve been going out with? They share your culture and—”

  Arya squeezed him harder, “All my dating efforts only made me love you even more! I thought I needed someone from my own culture, but I found nothing but obnoxiously self-centered, rude braggarts. Most of those guys wouldn’t have needed a conversation with President Willis to make me wait. They would’ve ignored me to blather about beer with a guy they saw every day. And they wouldn’t have dreamed of apologizing for it afterward.”

  “Did you just say, ‘made me love you more’?” Kaem narrowed his eyes suspiciously, “As if you already loved me?”

  “Oh, hell, Kaem,” Arya said, leaning back to look at him with eyes she could feel welling with tears. “I’ve loved you since you were a freshman. I don’t know why. There never seemed to be any good reason for it.”

  “If that’s true, why have you been pushing me away? Giving me such a hard time?”