Rich Man's Sky Page 25

  Carol Beseman (with whom Miyuki also hoped to be friends) took on quite a bit of responsibility herself. She was, among other things, in charge of Enterprise City’s U.S. holdings, but by agreement she also had the household to run, so it was ready on a moment’s notice to host dinner parties for politicians, billionaires, bureaucrats and celebrities. She had a staff of servants doing the heavy lifting, but still it took a lot of her time, as well it should, because the bigger Antilympus donors and sponsors and political allies needed that constant personal touch. It must be infuriating, Miyuki thought, to be at once a captain of industry, an astronaut in training, and somehow also a goddamn housewife, but that was perhaps her deal with the devil, for her chance to live on Mars. She and Beseman were also postponing the children Miyuki knew they both wanted—another thing that had to wait until they were all safely on Mars.

  Truthfully, Miyuki had a similar deal with herself when it came to children and relationships. The pickings might be slim at Antilympus—just fifty men, period. But she dared to hope that one of them might just be the love of her life and the father of her children. And if not, well, then she would die alone on Mars, having accomplished more than most people ever would.

  Did isolation bring people closer together? The colony would be isolated, in a way no group of people ever really had been—separated from Earth by enough distance that the speed of light became much more than a theoretical concern. Signals take anywhere from five minutes to forty-five minutes to make the round trip, depending on the positions of the planets. And of course when Mars was directly behind the Sun as seen from Earth (which happened for about twelve hours every twenty-six months), the delay was even longer, because you had to bounce your signal off a repeater at ESL5. That meant, among other things, that Beseman could not be physically present at trouble spots for Enterprise City or the Marriott Stars, or even the Earthly supply chains for Concordia and Antilympus. He was going to have to delegate even more aggressively to Earthly employees, and have a personal assistant or two on Earth to act as his eyes and ears and voice. Which would leave Miyuki, finally, free.

  So literally her entire future hinged on her getting a spot at Antilympus, and even then she wouldn’t have a real shot, if Beseman himself weren’t one of her sponsors. Her largest sponsor, by a significant margin, and also by far her greatest proponent. It was an interesting question, whether his word should carry so much weight, but it absolutely did. And he did have his thumb on the scales, yes. He wanted her to have that future and that freedom, even if it meant someone else could not. Not in the first wave, anyway. So Beseman controlled her destiny, and she would do whatever it took to maximize her chances. Including letting him bend the rules a little on her behalf.

  “It’s delicate,” he noted carefully, as if reading her mind. “If you’re the one managing the optics of your own sponsorships, it could look like a conflict of interest. On the other hand, who else would you want doing that for you? People can see how important you are to the overall effort, and how hard it would be for me to get all of this done without someone like you. Without you, specifically. It may not fit some people’s definition of fairness, but we can’t please everyone, and nothing says we have to try. As long as the donations keep flowing, we don’t have to be anything. We’re the future of humanity, right here, and as long as we’re consistent, nobody can tell us—tell me—what the rules should be. I believe in a better tomorrow, Miyuki, which I’m paying for, and which you’ve earned the right to be a part of. So to hell with what people think; we’re doing this.”

  To which she offered an uncomfortable, “Um, thanks.” What else could she say?

  1.10

  25 April

  ✧

  ESL1 Shade Station

  Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1

  Extracislunar Space

  Alice found Igbal Renz in his overly windowed office, sitting in his chair behind his desk, building something in midair with a 3D pen.

  “Knock knock,” she said, because the hatch was open.

  He looked up. “Ms. Kyeong. Alice. How we doing today?”

  “I’m on the job,” she said, “studying security issues, but I have questions for you. Lots of them. Your whole profile here . . . well, it’s out of whack, isn’t it? I mean, it’s really panic city for all the major governments down there”—she waved vaguely at the Earth behind him—“looking up at you and wondering what you can do to them. You know that, right?”

  He turned back to his work—some sort of circuit board, rendered in green and black and shiny-gold plastic.

  “Control freaks,” he said, his high, gravelly voice betraying no amusement.

  “Yeah, well you’re going to have to come clean with me. I need to understand what you’re really up to, here.”

  “We,” he said. “What we’re up to. Yourself included.”

  She waved a hand in the air, impatient with him. “Fine. Fine. Can I come in?”

  “Have a seat,” he said, now fully focused on his work. The only chair in here was the one he was strapped into.

  “What’s that you’re building?” she asked.

  “Prototype.”

  “Prototype what?”

  “It’s a machine to ask me stupid questions, so the women around here don’t have to.”

  He was being a dick, and he was her enemy, and she had a job to do that he was not going to like, but she actually laughed a little. God help her, she kind of liked the guy. His directness and focus were straight out of the Special Forces, but his pudgy body told a softer story, and she could also detect a nerdy sense of wonder about him, and a basic lack of self-awareness made him seem, at certain moments, almost childlike. Despite his depraved public image, in person he was basically a kid at Disneyland, loving the dream he was living. There was something authentic about it that she could, grudgingly, respect.

  “Fuck off,” she told him mildly.

  He said, “I’m seeing if I can build computers using nothing but 3D-printed tunnel diodes. Right now all my gigahertz-range processors take six different materials and four different machines to build. I’m thinking I can do it with three and one, and free up some metals for a sexier use.”

  Sexier. Yeah. There was the depravity. Still childlike, somehow, but a lot less cute. She reminded herself that he was a drug addict, and a megalomaniac.

  “Does it all come down to sex?” she asked. “Is that why you’re doing all this?”

  He snorted, still not looking up. “You read too many tabloids.”

  “Meaning what? How many women have you impregnated up here? How many are you planning to?”

  Now he did look up. “With my own personal sperm? One.”

  “One?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Pam?”

  “She’s my girlfriend, yes. My girlfriend of almost six years, if we’re being nosy about it. She and I have an open relationship, but not that open. I don’t keep harems. Shit. Are they still saying that?”

  “Your own people are saying that.”

  He laughed. “Well that explains a lot. Shit. What do you think this is? I’m a feminist, Alice. Worldwide, my workforce is fifty-eight percent female. You think it’s because I’m . . . Wow. So, what, you all came up here thinking I was going to . . . I mean, do you have any idea what that would do to the long-term plan? You think we can colonize space if everybody’s half brothers and half sisters with each other? Holy moly. I need women who are willing to get pregnant, yes. Obviously. You load up a starship with people, they had better all be pregnant women! Anything else is a waste of mass budget. But from different fathers! From genetically diverse donor sperm! Oh lordy, I can see I need a frank conversation with my PR people.”

  Alice’s brain stopped working the moment he said “starship.” Did she hear that correctly? Was this yet another big briefing she had somehow missed? Jeanette had mentioned something about antimatter starship fuel, but Alice thought it was just chatter. She’d thought Jeanette was speculating
about some vague ambition of Igbal’s. At that time, her brain had stopped at the word “antimatter,” and its global security implications. But she could see it should have kept going. She should have followed up with more questions, different questions, instead of sulking about Derek Hakkens.

  Better late than never, she asked, “What are you talking about? You’re not seriously building a starship, are you?”

  He pointed out the window above them, toward the Earth.

  “You see that? That bright star hanging out there next to Antarctica? That’s Alpha Centauri.”

  When she stared blankly back at him, he said, “You’re an astronaut? Really? It’s the closest star, Alice. Actually, it’s the three closest stars, and there’s a habitable planet out there. Mostly habitable. Proxima Centauri b, otherwise known as Renzworld. That’s where we’re going.”

  “Like, soon?”

  “Eventually. Once we have an engine that can get us there in under twenty years. This is all highly proprietary information, by the way, Madame Sheriff. No blabbing.”

  All kinds of light bulbs went off in Alice’s brain, and suddenly she didn’t feel so stupid.

  “That’s why you’re freezing people. That’s why you’re freezing pregnant women.”

  “Correct. Jesus Christ, Alice, what kind of Frankenstein shit did you think was happening up here? You actually believe the tabloids? Seriously? Dan Beseman’s going to Mars, and he can have it. He can have it! Let his people name towns and hills and craters after themselves. My people—our people—can have their own planets. And they can terraform the shit out of ’em, with no U.N. Space Commission shaking a finger.”

  “‘They’? You’re not going with them?”

  “Am I a pregnant woman? What did I just say? No, I’m not going, not on the first ship. It sounds like you think you’re not, either. You said ‘them,’ not ‘us.’ But ultimately, that’s why all of you are up here.”

  “I said ‘them’? What are you, the grammar cartel?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m the grammar cartel. But you are a candidate for this mission, Alice. All you women are. You want to travel? See the sights? I can give you what no one else can. Crew selection has been a very gradual, ad hoc process, so for better or worse, you’re going to have plenty of time to think about it. Unfortunately, our star drive research is progressing very slowly, and with many, many setbacks. But even if you decide not to go, or we decide not to send you, we’re colonizing right here, too. This place”—he spread his arms, indicating the whole of the station—“belongs to us. The Lagrange point: ours. The Shade: ours. Mining, manufacturing, all under our control. This whole damn orbit belongs to us. The future belongs to us.”

  “Jesus, Igbal.”

  He looked at her for a thoughtful moment, scratching his beard and seeming a bit glum, then said, “Pam is going. With my baby inside her.”

  “What do you mean she’s going?” The starship wasn’t built yet. The starship drive wasn’t invented yet. That was only possible if . . . if she got frozen now, and stayed that way until the mission launched. Whenever that might be. She said, “You’re going to freeze her until then?”

  His eyes were intense enough to be a little scary. “Last I heard, you’re going to freeze her until then. Actually, you’re going to freeze her, thaw her out, check her vital signs, make sure everything’s working as intended, and then yes. Freeze her again, for as long as it takes. She’ll wake up at Proxima.”

  “Jesus. Jesus Christ.”

  “I didn’t get to Esley by thinking small. Nobody ever got anywhere by thinking small.”

  Alice clicked her tongue back and forth over her teeth, trying to wrap her brain around all this. Her brain limply refused.

  “We’re getting off track,” she said. “I mean, I asked. Fair enough, I asked what you were up to, and now I know. But what I came here to talk to you about is, you’re scaring people. You, personally, and it’s a major security problem you don’t really seem to grasp. People look at you, and they see someone who could freeze the Earth, or hold it hostage.”

  “For what?” he said, somehow managing to sound both amused and genuinely horrified. “To gain what?”

  “More . . . power?”

  He laughed. “Alice, in a totally literal sense, I’ve got more power than I know what to do with. Terawatts of it! We generate as much electricity as North America, which is a lot of electricity, by the way. A lot! And let me tell you, there are much easier ways to destroy the world. Any space colony could drop rocks until the Earth cried uncle, and gave in to our demands. You could do it. Nothing they could do to stop you. They have some bullshit lasers, which they think will protect them, but against what? They can stop a rock weighing X-many tons. Fine, I’ll just drop a bigger rock. Five X. Ten X. Or a thousand rocks at the same time, wrapped in stealth fabric. You think I can’t? You think Sir Lawrence can’t? You think Grigory Orlov can’t?

  “But me? Really? Think about it: What are my demands? I don’t need money. I’ve got more disposable income than governments do! I don’t need power or raw materials. What do we actually need up here? Just stuff from Earth. Let us ship some goddamn grapefruits and anchovies up here, and yes, maybe some Swiss femtosecond timing units. What’s the difference? I want the blockade called off and the embargo dropped, but I had that already, two months ago. They could have just left us alone, and then we’d have no demands. It makes no sense.

  “You know what they’re really afraid of? The Coalition countries, the ITAR signatories? Precision! They don’t give a shit if I freeze the world; they give a shit if I very slightly dim the sun over America, and focus a little extra sunlight on Outer Mongolia.”

  Alice felt her frown deepen. “Yeah, I was told you could do that.”

  “Of course I can do that. Do you know what a 2D binary Fresnel is? I can see by your face that you don’t. That’s fine. Point is, the Shade can steer light as well as block it. But it can’t freeze the Earth. it just can’t. Right now, as big as it is, the whole Shade only blocks only zero point one percent of the sunlight reaching the Earth. We’d need a shade twenty times larger to start a new ice age, and at the rate we’re going, that would take a hundred years to build. Even then, the climate changes would be gradual. What you’re talking about—freezing the whole world—would take centuries. Literally, centuries. You think governments care what happens in a hundred years? Seriously? You think any of the world’s problems would exist right now if that were true?”

  “You could move the Shade closer,” she speculated. “That would block more sunlight.”

  “We could,” he agreed with a little half laugh. “But that would also take years. It’s a delicate sailing operation, and there’s no way we’d ever get a chance to finish it. If they saw us moving it, they’d really freak out. That’s not what they’re worried about, either. They’re toddlers, Alice. Greedy little toddlers. They care about reelection, taxes, and looking tough, in that order. It’s stupid, but it’s true. They don’t give a shit about the future; they don’t even think it’s a real thing. It’s just something that happens in movies. But here in the present, a zero point one percent shift in insolation—in sunlight hitting the ground—is more than enough to affect the weather. It’s more than enough to affect crop yields and troop movements and maybe even steer a hurricane away from land. Or toward it! They look at me and see the God of Weather, and no way in hell are they going to make donations to that church. You see how petty? How stupid it is? Yes, I can sell rain and shine to the highest bidder if I want to. For chump change. For money I don’t need. That’s what scares them.”

  “Or antimatter,” she said. “You could sell that. Or drop it on them.”

  “Or antimatter, yes. Real supervillain shit. But goddammit, why? I’m selling twenty million dollars a day worth of spaceship parts and hab modules, and another twenty million in raw ingots. I’ve got a billion-dollar sphere of gold in a fucking parking orbit in front of the Shade. A billion dollars! What am I suppo
sed to do with that? It’s a rounding error. It’s a rounding error.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you should scare them,” she said. “It matters that you do. You’re a druggie, for one thing.”

  “Breaking what law?” He looked at the circuit board in his hands, scoffed, and spun it hard against one of the windows. It shattered impressively, the shards tumbling off in every direction. “There! You see that? That’s Earthly law. That’s what their laws mean to the God of Weather.”

  “Wow. And you wonder why you have security problems.”

  Alice didn’t know why she was bothering to lecture him. She didn’t really know why she was having this conversation at all, or why she did anything really. Was she, like her mother, basically just crashing around in the world? Breaking things, making snide judgments, creating nothing of her own? Was it only the structure and discipline of the Air Force that had ever made her look like a functional person? It was an ugly thought, but perhaps more true than not. Best to get this business over with, somehow, soon, and get back to the Maroon Berets, where there was no gap between who she was and what other people needed her to be.

  Thoughtful again, Igbal said, “DMT is a naturally occurring brain chemical. It induces euphoria, yes, but that’s not why I take it.”

  Alice waited, not sure what to say, or how to exit the conversation without raising questions.

  “Tribal drugs for contacting the spirit world have always contained DMT. The spirit world, okay? Contact with Beings of some kind. Since the dawn of time. It’s also a component of near-death experiences, released by the brain when oxygen levels get too low. And what do people report, when they’ve come back from the brink? Contact. Contact with something they can’t quite explain afterwards. Biochemistry research caught up with that in 1956, when a psychiatrist named Steven Szára injected DMT into his own arm, and reported ‘lights and sounds, Beings and infernal messages.’ It’s in the literature, Alice. That’s a scientific fact.