Rainbow Mars (2 page)

Gorky spoke briefly, gathered his entourage and left.

The Center's personnel gathered around Ra Chen.

“Good news and bad,” he said. “The Center really could be shut down. Gorky wants to save us, he says—” Ra Chen ignored the collective cynical sigh. “His ass is on the line too. He wants to talk. He'll bring a man, I'll bring a man.

“
You,
Svetz. Don't bring Wrona. Zeera, can you keep things going here?”

Zeera Southworth scratched Wrona behind the ears. “You and me,” she told the dog.

3

I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last.

—Dr. Jerry Pournelle

 

Waldemar the Fourth had liked flowers. Green Resources Bureau had saved him a few for the garden path that led to the World Globe.

Chair Gorky walked with Miya Thorsven, a few meters ahead of Ra Chen and Svetz. Their voices were relaxed tones too low to make out.

Six kinds of orchids lived on vertical slabs of plant nutrient. Labels floated beside them, and followed where the wind moved the flowers: holograms projected into a visitor's eyes. The roses weren't doing well, but mutations made for marvelous variety.
Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Artichoke:
virtual labels said that some had considered these plants edible—

“Svetz!”

Thorsven and Gorky had reached the World Dome; but Svetz delayed. He'd never had a chance to linger here. “Boss, do you
want
to convey your sense of urgency to Chair Gorky?”

“Your point?”

“You told me once, never negotiate under a deadline. We're the masters of Time.”

Ra Chen's head jerked once:
yes.
“What are you looking at?”

Svetz was watching minuscule motion on a leaf.
Caterpillar,
the virtual label said. It had too many legs to count. Svetz watched it bend double to cross from one side of a tattered leaf to the other.

*   *   *

The World Globe was new: Waldemar the Tenth's last construction project. The whole Earth was projected onto the interior of a globe, updated every few minutes with data from myriads of weather satellites. A walk with no railings led through the Globe. It was large enough that Svetz couldn't tell its size.

Miya Thorsven and Willy Gorky walked ahead of them. Miya glanced back. “Point out something interesting,” Ra Chen said, “or else get
moving.
”

“It's like looking at the Earth from inside, isn't it? Boss, have you spent a lot of time in the garden and the Globe?
I
never took enough advantage of the perks. This could be our last chance.”

“It could, couldn't it?”

Miya dropped back and engaged Svetz in conversation. Ra Chen took it as a hint and caught up with Gorky. Oddly lit by the white glare of ice caps above and below, and a whorl of hurricane over the Pacific, the Heads of Space and Time walked ahead of their aides. They talked like old friends who hadn't met in some time: cordial and a little cautious.

Svetz heard a little of that. Gorky speaking: “I've always been sure that the Earth will need to be terraformed. More nuclear power, or orbiting solar power arrays—”

“Too late, Willy. Those forms of power don't leave residues, not even oxides of nitrogen and carbon. You stop putting that stuff in the atmosphere, people will stop breathing!”

“Do it earlier? Time machine…”

The World Globe was
big.
Svetz looked down at Antarctica and wondered how far he would fall. The height didn't bother Miya. He suppressed a sigh when he and Miya reached the far end.

The Zoo—Vivarium—had been a favorite place to Waldemar the Tenth, forty-first Secretary-General to the United Nations. Of course it was supervised. Bureau of History cameras were hidden everywhere. But any spy or media camera found here would carry a death penalty.

The Heads would have privacy from all but their own people.

Gorky noticed nothing but the dominance game he was playing with Ra Chen. Miya's eyes danced left, right, further, back.
Owl. Horse.
Snake watched Svetz pass. Svetz bowed. Snake nodded its regal, brilliantly feathered head.

Here a cage was torn open as if some monstrous bird had hatched from it. Two down was another, its shredded roof bowed inward.
Ostrich. Elephant.

Horse's head came up when Miya walked past. It glared at Svetz along its fearsome spiral horn, and Svetz stepped away from Miya Thorsven without quite knowing why.

Gorky asked, “Have you done anything about replacing Elephant?”

He knew what the torn cages meant!

Ra Chen answered, “We had a pickup mission planned. Sir, what's our budget like?”

“Call me Willy.”

“In public too?” asked Ra Chen.

“Please. Now, I can keep us going for a year, Bureau of the Sky Domains and anything connected with Space. You can have anything you can convince me you need. Saving money won't help us. Keeping the time machine in repair, that would be normal maintenance. Another elephant, another ostrich … well,
why?
”

“Elephant can wait,” Ra Chen agreed, and Svetz smiled. He had not looked forward to trying to get another elephant into the big X-cage.

“My thought is, extinct life-forms can wait! They aren't going anywhere,” Gorky said. “On a legitimate mission, sure, bring home anything you like.
We
decide what's a legitimate mission.”

Ra Chen said, “Waldemar the Ninth wanted videos of Jack the Ripper, John F. Kennedy, Ted Bundy—”

“Who?”

“Crime scenes. Executions. We hadn't built the extension cages yet. We mounted a vidcamera on the end of a boom and pushed it far enough into the past to record the Nicole Simpson murder.
Gah!
We can record anything we have
exact
time and location for. We got some famous riots. Then the machinery glitched up and we were off-line for two years. Waldemar Nine would have shut us down if he hadn't died first.

“Waldemar Ten wanted animals. Waldemar the Eleventh wants planets and stars, they say…?” Ra Chen waited for Gorky's nod. “Willy, I don't know how a time machine can give you that.”

“I thought I did.” Gorky turned the sudden force of his glare on Svetz. “Hanville Svetz, isn't it? Svetz, none of this is to be spread around. Do you know what I mean by FTL?”

Svetz thought he did. “You need to go faster than light to reach any star while any one SecGen is in power.”

“Faster-than-light is fiction.”

“Fiction.”
Huh?

“Waldemar the Tenth was like a bright child. I said I could get us to the stars, and he believed it. Ra Chen, those books you rescued from California saved our butts. We used the science fiction as source material. We mocked up computer-generated landscapes and cities from other worlds, and aliens too. He believed all of it. But Waldemar the Eleventh won't. Our real power is pitiable.”

Ra Chen could have dismantled the Bureau of the Sky Domains if he'd known that a year ago. A time machine could fix that! Svetz saw all that in Ra Chen's eyes, and saw him shrug it off. Ra Chen said, “Beware of wishes granted, Willy.”

“I
know.
A bright SecGen who really wants stars! I thought I could use the Institute to get him that,” Gorky said.

Miya Thorsven half whispered to Svetz, “Dominance games.”

“I've watched a lot of this,” Svetz said.

“Director Gorky swallowed up Ra Chen's department. Would Ra Chen help him justify that?”

Svetz told her what he thought Ra Chen would want her to hear. “If Ra Chen couldn't protect what he had, there's no point in asking for it back. If Gorky loses, the SecGen is likely to dismantle Time and Space and start over with relatives as his Chairs.”

Gorky was saying, “We haven't sent anything bigger than a bedsheet to the stars, but we've had the planets for a long time. Hibernation and an ion-fission drive took a crew of five to Jupiter. That technique would take us anywhere, given time. We could build another Jupiter ship and fire it at Four-four, if we had the
time.
”

“Four-four?”

“51 Pegasi 4–4, fourth moon of the fourth planet, is as close as we can find to another Earth for hundreds of light-years. Only, it's early Earth. Reducing atmosphere. We've never found an oxygen world.

“So. Send a drone package to 51 Pegasi. Move back in time by as long as it takes. A thousand years? A billion?” Gorky brushed aside their attempts to interrupt. “Algae in the atmosphere starts the terraforming process. Add higher life-forms before anything competitive can evolve.

“Now launch a manned ship. A hundred years to 51 Pegasi, we can manage that. We find Earth's twin waiting for us! Drop a hundred and eight years into the past. Phone home. The laser takes eight years to reach Earth from Four-four. It gets there a month after the ship leaves, or a
week.
Ra Chen, I take it that won't work.”

Ra Chen was openly laughing. “I'd be
all day
telling you what's wrong with that. Willy, did you ever think of asking?”

“I thought you'd wind up owning
me
if I asked favors from the Institute for Temporal Research,” Gorky said.

Svetz thought he was probably right, but Ra Chen chortled. “You see it, Svetz? He thought the extension cages were the time machines!”

“Ah.” Svetz told Gorky, “No, sir. The time machine is under the Center. The whole Center is just the top, like a lid on a jar, with a twisty folded-over quark accelerator underneath. The X-cage is the only part that moves.”

Gorky asked, “What's its mass?”

Svetz didn't know.

“Three million eight hundred thousand tons,” Ra Chen said with some satisfaction. “Under Waldemar Eight and Nine we built it all as a laboratory. After we got it working we built over it to make the Center.”

“How much
could
you shrink it? Unlimited budget. We're only talking, now.”

“How much mass can you put into orbit, Willy?”

“With the new heavy lifters, four thousand tonnes each flight.”

“Forget
that,
” Ra Chen said.

“You've been running a gigantic hoax,” Svetz said. He missed Gorky's fury and Ra Chen's disapproval while he chewed new data. “What
have
you got? Willy, sir, what have you
really
got? Cities on the Moon? Mars? Asteroids?”

“Moon and Mars,” Miya said. “Mars is just twenty people. Luna City is two thousand, I think, but buried, not much to see. The glass domes we showed Waldemar Ten came out of a computer.”

“Anything on the asteroids?”

“Some automated mining projects that broke down. One day we'll get it right,” Miya said. “Mine the asteroids for metal. Put all the factories in orbit—”

Svetz waved it off. “Heavy lifter?”

Gorky said, “We're building it. We're building four. I could ask for forty now, but I'd have to justify the expense eventually.”

“Will the Secretary-General wait?”

Gorky's jaw set hard. “He'll wait for Divine Image. A year at least. Do you know what a Von Neumann device is?”

Both men shook their heads. Miya Thorsven lit up. “It's a machine no bigger than your two hands that makes more of itself! It's called
Michelangelo.
I worked on the Divine Image Project. Michelangelo mines the Moon and makes more Michelangelos and piles the slag along the Earth twilight rim. The numbers double over and over. In a year and a bit we'll have trillions of Michelangelos! They're carving the near face of the Moon into an image of Waldemar the Eleventh!”

Svetz gaped. Gorky murmured, “Resculpted from Waldemar Tenth, of course.”

Ra Chen said, “Ambitious. If you're processing that much Moon, you could bake oxygen out of the slag too. You'd wind up with an atmosphere.”

Gorky laughed and clapped a big hand on Ra Chen's shoulder, hard. “Right. Right!”

“Doubling rate?”

“Week and a bit—”

“But you get all your action near the end, don't you? For this next year there's nothing to be seen from anywhere on Earth…? Just videos of any number of your little mining things crawling over Moon rock.”

“Yes.”

“He bought it?”

“He did.”

Miya was looking at Gorky in shocked disappointment. Gorky said, “I'm sorry, Miya. After you came back to Earth, some of the Michelangelos were chewing rock in the wrong places. Others got blocked up, or made junk, or just quit. We'll keep fiddling.”

He turned back to Ra Chen. “But a year from now we'll have to show the little buggers operating, or else have
something
to show him, or else I'd better retire to the Moon. That's real. There's been a city in Clavius Crater since before there were Waldemars. Six hundred years.”

Svetz said, “Moon and Mars. Anything else?”

“Rovers! We've got toy boxes crawling over every planet and moon in the solar system, hundreds of asteroids and scores of comets, taking pictures and samples. We've sent Forward probes past more than forty stars, with more on the way, Svetz, but the Forward devices are just silver blankets made of computer elements and launched by light pressure. Enough laser power to cremate a city in ten minutes,” Gorky said, watching to see if Ra Chen would flinch. “Firing for ten weeks.”

“The lasers, they're on the Moon?”

“Yes.”

“So you've got the Moon, and everything else is smoke and mirrors?”

“There's Mars Base One. Twenty men and women and some VR sets to control a thousand Rovers, Pilgrim model. I built it on the equator. I was hoping we could experiment with advanced lifting systems. Orbital towers. Maybe a Pinwheel. We never got that far. Too expensive. Even life support for cosmonauts is too expensive.”