Jezebel's Ladder (20 page)

Wednesday at noon, Jez had her first meeting with the Red
Giant search team. The crystal-ball controller displayed the stars with amazing
clarity, but there were still unexplained adjustments for wobble deep inside
the rat’s nest of computer code. Determined to get to the bottom of the puzzle,
the five-engineer team showed her all the raw data, explaining the basics of
planetary motion and optics.

After the mini-vacation, her
schedule was jam-packed. At forty-five minutes into the meeting, she took a
guess where they were going and cut to the chase, “And that’s when you
discovered that the football-field-sized gadget we’re programming isn’t a
telescope.” The engineers were stunned. “It’s just the
receiver
for the
real telescope somewhere in space. That’s what you’re telling me?”

Kyle closed his eyes, ignoring
everyone else in the room. The new idea fit the model etched into his brain
from the page better than all the documentation he’d read so far.

Jayshree, the female
second-in-command from India, stepped in. She was very small and burnished
brown. “No. We were just about to lay out the next month of research options.
Kyle, help me out here. Tell her it isn’t that simple.”

Kyle opened his eyes to type on his
laptop.

“Boss?” Jayshree asked.

“Quiet, he’s onto something,” Jez
admonished.

Two minutes later, an orbit
appeared on his screen. He flipped it around to show everyone. “The telescope
is hiding in the Van Allen belt,” Kyle announced.

“Not possible,” the youngest
engineer asserted. He looked about thirty, with wavy hair past his shoulders.
His nametag read “Phineas” and had a cutout of a cartoon character beside the
name. “It would have shown up on NORAD tracking, even that far out.”

Jayshree pursed her lips and
swiveled on the chair. “What if it’s not metal?”

“Pretend this is
Star Trek
,”
Kyle encouraged. “Or your favorite book.”

A heated, four-way argument ensued.
After fifteen minutes, they agreed that a gravity lens would explain the
excellent quality of the red-giant images projected. “Patently impossible,”
insisted Yolen, the balding scientist.

Phineas admitted, “A gravity
attenuator that close to Earth’s surface would have all sorts of side-effects
when we refocus. And something big would need to be generating the lens.”

Jez, who had been listening with
half an ear while texting Crusader and scanning personnel files, said, “Worry
about that later. How do you know there aren’t effects unless you look for
them?”

Jayshree gasped, “There was a
tornado in Missouri just after the group demonstration. What if my moving the
telescope lens caused that? Three people died.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,”
Yolen said. “Meteorological or tidal effects have dozens of explanations and
take a team of experts to sort through even under controlled circumstances. We
would need time on at least two observatories to confirm the existence of this
hypothetical, invisible lens. That alone could take weeks.”

Kyle nodded. “We’ll divide up into
attack groups to prove or disprove the lens theory.”

Yolen complained, “This is insane.
I’m not going to waste a month of my time…”

“Fine, you’re transferred,
effective immediately. You’re now liaison for the planet-search team,” Jez
decreed.

Kyle whispered, “I thought you said
I had control over my own team, autonomy.”

“Yes, but this has nothing to do
with his antiquated mindset. He’s not cleared. The rest of your team has just
been moved en masse into Fortune Aerospace. Mr. Yolen, please excuse us,” the
Research Director said, waiting for the dumbstruck scientist to depart.

Yolen started to muster a threat,
but she cut him off. “Every family has secrets.” He turned pale and left.

Kyle muttered, “They’re going to
change your name to Field Marshal Butterfly. Blackmail?”

Jez whispered back, “He’s already
told his mistress about this project. A leak could be fatal to all of us; it’s
in everyone’s best interest.”

Then, she locked eyes with each
team member. “Kyle will explain the background, but the concept of
super-advanced technology was not just an exercise designed to test you.”

Phineas lit up, “This is so cool. I
told you there was more.”

Jayshree hushed him and asked her
manager, “Why do we need to be in that particular division of the conglomerate
now?”

In hushed tones, Kyle said, “I
don’t have anything concrete; however, I would bet my next month’s paycheck
that the device not only exists, but is extra-terrestrial in nature.”

Phineas jumped up and shouted, “Yes!”

“But you can’t tell anyone, not
yet,” Kyle reminded him.

His face fell. Jez got up from the
table. “Cheer up. I have to go talk to my boss about getting grunt monkeys to
help you guys.”

Jayshree said, “We prefer to call
them interns.”

“Just tell me what specialties
you’ll need, and I’ll open requisitions,” Jez said.

Jayshree recited her shopping list,
“Meteorology or Chaos Theory, with a solid math background; astronomy,
hopefully someone with connections in the community already; and programming,
the sort that reads your license plates at the toll booth.”

“Machine vision,” Kyle provided. “Camera
expertise is a must. We might be able to pinpoint this lens by the star-field
distortion.”

Phineas nodded, “You’d need at
least two to triangulate.”

“And three to tetrahedrate in 3D
space,” Jez agreed. “It’s a good start. Kyle, work up a budget by tonight.”

“Sure,” the lead scientist said
with sarcasm. “I’ll just whip that up.”

To the group, Jez said, “I know I’m
asking a lot. Crack this thing’s secrets, and we could all go into space some
day. The harder you work, the sooner that day will be.”

****

She convened an emergency Ladder
board meeting at 5:00 p.m. eastern time. Only Benny seemed glad to see her. “We
need to prepare a shuttle mission from the Brazil site as soon as possible.”

Fortune had learned never to say no
outright to this woman. “Explain why I should take a site that is making a
50-million dollar-a-month profit and turn that into a 500-million-dollar loss.”

“Change the crypto keys now,” Jez
insisted. When Crusader nodded, she continued, “Because the device you built
isn’t the space telescope; it’s just the receiver for one that
someone
else
put in orbit around the Earth.” She paused to let the words sink in. “We have a
bona-fide, working alien artifact within our grasp. We need to be the first
ones to reach it, or this whole race was for nothing.”

“The Eye in the Sky,” Benny said,
coining the new internal name for the artifact. Then, he glared at her. “You
cheated.”

“Only a little. All the necessary
brainpower was there in one room. I saved them a month’s R&D,” she said,
justifying her use of the butterfly.

“Buddy’s right. You know the rules.
You’re off the Red Giant team; Quan will take over the nuts and bolts,” Fortune
ordered. Quan was another former-NASA, former-military hire. “Your new job is
to earn me half-a-billion dollars.”

“How soon could we launch?” Jez asked,
scheming.

Fortune flipped pages on his
calendar. “We have a window with payload scheduled in April. If we eat about
nineteen million in penalties, we could co-opt that run. Or you can wait nine
more weeks for the next one after that—it would only cost us ten million to
renege on.”

“Plus three high-resolution,
Lucasfilm, digital steadicams, supercomputer time, three graduate students on a
rush order and incidentals. Call it an even 570,” Jez said with a poker face.
Once you were that close to a billion, what did a few more million matter? This
must be what senators felt like.

“Why the hurry?” Fortune demanded.
He trusted her instincts now, despite earlier misgivings.

“Crusader told me the Red Giant
project was leaked. And I’ve read your latest physician’s report. I’m not the
only one who’s cheating.”

“Touché,” Fortune admitted. “We had
a war to pay for. Get me a way to pay for half of this mission by the two-week
mark and I’ll take it to the board with my backing.”

After the meeting ended, Jez was
alone with Benny in the teleconference room. He said, “This sounds like cause
to celebrate. Where do you want to eat?”

She gawked at him. “I still have to
make twenty million before I get to go home today!”

“Shh…” He used his fingertips to
caress the cords on her neck. “You need a massage.”

“Careful, your cast catches my hair
and pulls. You just want to club me over the head and drag me back to your
cave.”

He grinned. “No, but I might if it
got you to stop working for one night. If I give you a twenty-million-dollar
idea, will you leave at a sane time today?”

Jez grumbled, but conceded. She was
feeling overwhelmed.

He slid a notepad and pen toward
her. “We start with a little Dirt Bag psychology 101: he is giving you an
unrealistic challenge, expecting you to blindly rise to it. He doesn’t play
fair. Check out the numbers he gave you for the launch. DB rounds up. The
actual number could be as low as 450. Quan would know to the penny. Develop a
good relationship with that guy early on. Arrange the transition on your terms,
making it seem like you’re giving him a break and he owes you.”

She started taking notes.

He started pacing as he lectured. “Second,
he estimated too high on the opportunity costs. You can still carry the other
payloads on the mission; just do your mission last. It will probably run just a
little more fuel and overtime. Again, Quan will know the details; I’m just the
idea man.

“Third, you could probably get the
cameras used. Film companies replace all that gear every two years or so, and
there aren’t any more blockbusters scheduled for this year. If you route the
new experiment through a non-profit grant, Lucasfilm may even donate them. He’s
big on education.

“Fourth, grad students are cheap.
We can pay for them through the ‘name the star after your girlfriend’ program.”

Jez was giddy. “You just paid for
three and a half days!”

He waved his hands. “Don’t run to
him with this yet. He’ll just argue it away. Wait a week and give him a hundred
million in real money to distract him. Sedna’s page turned out to be a new
mathematical flow model for closed economic systems. Apply it to DB’s business
first. With tens of billions lying around, I’m sure you can find him a 1 or 2
percent savings. Distract him by showing him things he’s missed. Then you’ll
have breathing room.”

“You’re good,” she announced,
putting down her pen.

He shrugged. “I know people. There
has to be something I’m better at in this relationship. You need to get
everyone who report to you working on this, any project that can afford to slip
a week or so. That way, it’s two hundred people finding a hundred grand in
ideas a day. That’s achievable.”

“And what does my experienced and
worldly teacher want as a reward?” she asked suggestively.

“Well…I was kind of hoping…”

“Go on,” she purred.

“Could I name the artifact-scouting
project?” he asked. Her smile deflated. “See, ‘Eye in the Sky’ is the title
track on an Alan Parsons’ Project album. The lead-in for that song on the radio
was always an instrumental called ‘Sirius.’ So I thought Project Sirius would
be the perfect name for the preamble to ‘Eye in the Sky.’”

Disappointed, she sighed, “Sure.”

He showed almost as much excitement
as Phineas had. Plus the concession netted her an enthusiastic kiss. She added,
“However, you need to write up the non-profit paperwork on the experiment. I
can’t fudge that.”

****

Nothing major happened for a while.

Daniel got into a battle of wills
with his adoptive father. As a minor, he needed the man’s permission to marry
Trina. Fortune refused. Daniel threatened to quit working as a scout until he
agreed. Fortune had three new OOB scouts, so he fired the boy. The two stopped
talking. Trina came back to work for Jez for the health insurance, and to keep
their corporate apartment. Since Fortune had already signed paperwork saying
his son could donate as much as he wanted to horse causes, Jez helped them
create their own charity. Daniel moved all of his money into the fund and made
Trina half owner. It was as close to a civil union as they could get between a
clone and a minor.

The outline of the script for the
one-hour documentary was written, PBS approved the project at unheard-of
speeds, and Benny began narrating the introduction. Post-production and
graphics would take the majority of the time and budget. Since information on
the device had already leaked to the competition, Benny’s team was able to use
the red-giant projector to cut the special-effects budget in half. As a
consequence, they had to register 137 new stars that appeared in the film clip.
Although she was still working out the kinks on dangerous pages, her policy was
that the information from the Ladder project belonged to everyone on the
planet.

Jez was so busy directing science
projects and collating ideas that she had little time to even eat. Tan forced
her to eat breakfast, Trina took lunch, and Benny took her to dinner away from
the keyboard.

She came up with an idea for a
revolutionary, new, high-nutrition pie one night and hired the chef from the
restaurant to join the Falun Gong people in the product labs. Benny thought it
was hilarious till she sold the prototype for a million and the dessert became
a recruiting tool in their cafeteria.

The next day, she was shuffling
pages around in the safe, just like she had done a dozen times before. In a
flash of inspiration, she attached the Red Giant page to Ideal Planets. They
joined into a single, seamless document. She claimed it as proof of her
three-cluster theory, though Fortune still scoffed at the idea.