04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (6 page)

A solar system somewhat like our own, one with planets and a star the right age. It was not a star like our sun, and none of the planets were like any known to humankind, nor in the least bit habitable, but they were there. Eleven planets, five inhospitably awful, making the hells of Mercury and Venus seem tame by comparison, five enormous ringed gas giants, and one totally frozen ball of something or other solid about the size of Mars at the end. But the gas giants had moons, lots of moons, and some were very familiar in various ways. Some were frozen, some were volcanically active, some were misshapen things battered by cosmic debris, but some had poisonous atmospheres that still protected their physical integrity. One in particular was about the size of Titan, a fact not unnoticed by Westrex.

Everyone was nervous about the whole project. Such a long-term project, over such a long period of time, was unprecedented in human history, and it had cost tremendously. The always fragile alliance had often been on the verge of breaking apart, as the nations and allies involved were hardly friendly to one another and often were at great odds throughout various parts of the world—even shooting odds. The Union of Hispanic Socialist Republics held the remains of North America in an iron grip and threatened an encircled Brazil, even with its Guianan allies. The Chinese were threatening Indonesia on the south and Greater India, which included Bangladesh, on the southwest, after having swallowed what remained of Japan. The U.S.S.R. held the top of the globe, from its historic borders to Ireland on the west, Alaska on the east, and Canada down to the Great Lakes and the U.H.S.R border. All hated each other's guts, and all were meddling in Africa and the Pacific regions, where only the loose Commonwealth and a lot of protectorates of that Commonwealth existed.

The Commonwealth had only one thing—its leadership in research of Flux—but it hadn't the money to do it on its own. Much of the technology had to be shared with the others just to get things going. The Soviets had Mars almost entirely to themselves, and there really weren't too many other places to go worth going to.

That was why the leaders of government and industry throughout the Commonwealth had been gathered at the Auckland Conference, and why Madalyn Graham had briefed them. The time was now or never. Either Westrex established the first Flux colony, free to experiment with and control Flux as an independent, secure research colony far from the solar system, or they faced the certain disintegration of the alliance and the takeover of the project by one or more of the others.

It would cost more than any project in history, and those least able to afford it were being asked to pick up the cost at the price of depriving their populations, but it came down to a matter not of supremacy but of survival.

The path through Flux was linear. If Fourteen were established as exclusively Commonwealth, all future colonies would have to pass through it to get there and back. The Commonwealth would have the others as hostages of a sort, and would be in a position to demand sharing of discoveries by future colonies while not being in a position to be forced to divulge all they knew. That alone would keep some of the cooperation going. And, being first, they would retain their leadership in this technology. A whole world as a Philosopher's Stone, with unlimited energy to play with and a place to do it so distant they could take chances, take risks, that couldn't be dared on Titan or anywhere even near the solar system.

Of course, the others all demanded a multinational colony with divided areas of control, such as had been established on Titan, and Westrex was having a great deal of trouble fending them off, but now there was a stroke of misfortune for many that was a stroke of luck to the weakest alliance.

The cause of the war wasn't clear to anyone, including those fighting it, and it was all the more frustrating because as thousands died and armies moved, none of the leaders of the great multinational blocs involved would admit there
was
a war, while trying to limit its scope. All that was clear is that the Hispanic Republics and the Soviets had come to blows in North America and that China was taking full advantage of it to make some moves of her own in the area of Mongolia and also in the northern Pacific. The weapons were nonnuclear, of course, but that mattered very little to those killed that they were killed by "conventional" bombs on "limited range" missiles and that the disintegration projectors that dissolved whole towns didn't leave any nasty radiation or blow debris high into the atmosphere.

Van Haas had no trouble providing the calculations, and prayed only that there was enough time for him to get the upper hand. As the neutral in the fray, Westrex had taken general control of the entire Flux network for the duration, and it was taking full advantage of it.

One might design the machines to do the job, but they could not be built overnight—or so everyone, including the combattants, believed. They underestimated Westrex and its own research. One machine, and one only, needed to be built, and it was built in many parts and assembled deep in space. They had learned a lot about Flux, more than anyone dreamed. They opened their own Borelli Point in space, separate from any of the others, and they drew Flux into their magnetic coils, and they inserted the great machine in it as long ago their grandfathers had inserted the crude ashtray.

They made as many as they needed, and they did it on the cheap, out of Flux. Each was a perfect copy of the original in every detail.

The Westrex computers had estimated that it would take seven controlled Borelli Gates in permanent operation to effectively terraform their little distant world. Three would also be used for incoming traffic, three for outgoing traffic to future Bases. One would serve as the carrier to keep the Flux universe road consistent with seven Points in operation and to maintain the master levels.

The operation was a tricky one, since in order to maintain adequate Flux on the new little world the Gates would have to be constantly opening and closing in perfect synchronization other than when used for transportation outlets. Additionally, the Flux had to maintain a balance with the gravitational and magnetic forces that would be present on the worldlet in any event. Too much could cause all sorts of chain reactions and imbalances, particularly when Flux was transformed into matter and added to the planetary ecosystem; too little and they could risk not having a sufficient amount to maintain an atmosphere, water, power, and heat. They would be much too far from the sun in that solar system to depend on it for more than keeping the parent planet in its proper place.

And, of course, there was the minor matter that when Haller had arrived on Titan, there had not yet been an attempt to break down a human being into energy and shoot it someplace else. There had been a number of successes, even with higher animals, but there had been far more notable failures, most ugly enough and numerous enough that volunteers were not exactly standing in line to try it out, and the clock was running.

There was a very real chance of peace breaking out on Earth almost any week now.

She was tall, thin, in her mid-forties, a light-skinned African with strong coastal West African features and hair. Her name was Miriam Ikeba, and her title was Personnel Evaluation Supervisor, but everybody knew she was the division's chief psychologist. She greeted Haller warmly and told him to take a seat in a comfortable, high-backed reclining chair.

He did so, and waited until she took her own seat behind her desk.

"This what they're using instead of couches these days'?" he asked lightly.

"Most psychiatrists never did use couches," she responded in the same tone. "I'm not a psychiatrist, anyway. I'm a psychologist, which means I'm a doctor of philosophy, not medicine. Just relax."

More people have been fired by just relaxing before a "mere" psychologist than by telling off the boss to his face,
Haller noted to himself, but said nothing.

She shuffled some papers on her desk. No psychologist ever used a computer anywhere in their inner office, although the computer was vital in their work. It was tough to have a relaxing atmosphere with a terminal on the desk the subject couldn't see or read.

"Toby, I'll get right to the points I have to cover. You understand that what we say will be recorded for later evaluation?"

He nodded. "Go ahead."

"All right. Do you understand just what this project is all about?"

"I understand it very well, I think. We're going to take a pile of rock, in some distant solar system here, about the size of Titan and make it into the Garden of Eden so we can play with Flux and make Westrex richer and more powerful than it is without scaring the home folks."

It didn't faze her. "That's the engineering side of it. We assume you knew that before you volunteered."

He shrugged. "I'm an engineer. What did you expect?"

"Why you? What makes this appeal to you?"

He knew that he was being not only recorded but measured as well, probably at least partly through devices in the chair. They'd know, just by comparing the recording of the conversation with his physiological reactions, just whether or not he was putting them on and, if so, when.

"It's the leading edge of science. I took up engineering because it fascinated me more than anything else. Either I go where the action is or I picked the wrong profession."

She sighed. "That is the answer you expect us to want and it's probably true as far as it goes, but that's not the heart of the matter. You had the choice of doing experimental projects here, on Titan—the leading edge, as you said—or joining Project New Eden. That's because you tested out so high in your profession and your past performance has been outstanding in your field. One is safe, with immediate rewards both monetarily and professionally. The other is an incredible risk. No human being has actually ever been broken down and transmitted through Flux. The process is uncertain with higher mammals now. You seem certain it will be solved."

Again he shrugged. "If it's not, we won't go."

"But if you do—this no longer becomes a job but a way of life, a colonization effort. The incredible expense of transmitting all this makes it very possible that you'll be in this new world for many years, perhaps decades. By the time your own project makes it cheaper and easier, you'll be an old man far removed from Earth society. What about family and friends?"

"I have a brother and a sister, as you well know, both of whom think I am bloody well insane to go for this. One is a sheep farmer and the other manages a ski resort. We're not all that close. I'll miss seeing them and my nieces and nephews, but I don't feel that sense of familial commitment. My dad's dead. Most of my friends have been professional, without any sense of lasting bonds, and some of them are about here someplace. I've generally been able to get along well and make new friendships where I've gone over the years. I like it that way."

"Your father's deceased, but your mother's still alive."

"That's true," he admitted, "and it's the only tie I'll miss, but you don't know my mum. She's old, and we knew we might never see each other again, but if she were younger and up to it, she'd have volunteered herself."

Ikeba nodded to herself. She knew all this; it was merely a way to dance into the heart of the matter. "And you still haven't really answered my question," she noted. "All right— family, profession, support. Now, why are you
really
going? Is it the romance of it? The adventure? The pioneer spirit in the genes?"

He stared at her, realizing now what this was all about. In the hundreds of hours of this back on Earth they'd not been able to really peg him, neatly pigeonhole him as they had most of the others. They knew enough to see that they didn't really know his guts, and they insisted on it. It was a price they demanded for a ticket outward bound.

He sighed. "All right. Yes, it's all of those things. Certainly I've dreamed of this long before it was possible or anyone ever thought of it. Still, you're right. Cutting the bonds to Mother Earth and its culture—and this is still Mother Earth, really—can be difficult to do for many people without some sort of religious-style fervor. I understand that. It's not so for me. Laying aside the leading-edge business, and the romance, it's a new start."

"For yourself?"

"No. For people. We've made a mucking bloody mess of things over the past few centuries. We're dead in the water, going nowhere if not out to the stars. Half the population or more is permanently on drugs. Robotics and automated agriculture on Earth and in orbit have eliminated the need of the human race to breed, and that was the only thing left for us even centuries ago. The so-called civilized world leaves their flats, goes down and draws their drug ration and their dole, and sits around in happy mindless joy with some three-dimensional wallscreen shows on all four walls. Some bread and booze and the technological circus and their drugs is all they need. They don't produce, and they are managed by the drugs not to consume beyond what the system can support. Or they're involved in some communal cult of the month, with weird rituals and brainwashing themselves into doing naturally what the drugs do for the rest so they can think of themselves as morally superior to the masses.

"The rest of the world, as usual, scrapes by in primitive subsistence while corrupt governments let them do it. We could feed the bloody world three times over and make 'em all fat pigs, yet much of the world is still starving, thanks to politics. The human race is a dead duck. Doc, and that's a fact."

"Some of the governments you call corrupt and primitive believe that the only way to keep human values alive is to limit technology and maintain a level of struggle," she noted, no emotion in her tone of voice. Still, it was clear he'd struck a nerve with her. Africa, after all, along with Asia, contained the bulk of such systems. "You must remember that this corporation is owned by eleven governments in common, including some you are putting down. Do you think they are hypocrites?"