Count to a Trillion

by John C. Wright

  So far, she seemed to be normal.

  “We discussed this,” she said, eyes elfin, mouth impish, “during our spat. Our first lovers’ quarrel! You lost.”

  He hated the fact that the top of her head no longer fit nicely under his chin when they hugged. Now the crown of her head was at the level of his lower lip, and it bothered him more than it should have: it reminded him of the time he found out when he was four years old that pi could not be resolved to any rational number. It seemed obscurely unnatural, as if someone had made a mistake when putting the universe together.

  “I’ll be made of sterner stuff when we reach the bridal bower, my fair rebel. Bad enough womenfolk can’t decide what to wear; what damn fool gave them the science to fashion up their flesh and bone, tissue and face?”

  “Why! The recent breakthroughs in biotechnology are due, my beloved, to someone’s policy of total honesty to the public. We cannot blame the Hermeticists—they did not invent the system. Someone else performed a mathematical analysis of combination-solutions in genes, a notation system he read off the Monument back when he was insane. Who is to blame, then?”

  “What? Next you’ll say the apeman who invented fire is to stand trial for every act of arson since the Stone Age.”

  “Hush, for there are sure to be press and spy-bees near the bridal car.”

  When they came to the end of the carpet, the flower-festooned electric car was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was Yorvel, looking plump and ridiculous in the gold-purple-scarlet livery of the Pope’s Swiss Guard, pole-arm held gingerly in one hand, bridle held firmly in the other. He was trying to restrain a nervous, stamping steed, a red horse the hue of blood.

  Rania said in a voice of limpid surprise, “But where is our car?”

  Menelaus petted the nose of the huge horse, who gently nuzzled him, sniffing with large, delicate nostrils the gold and ebony costume, the wide lace collar, wherein bridegrooms of this era and rank were clad. “What? The Pope arrives with forty-nine white horses and one red charger that I’ve owned for a year now, and you don’t recognize him?” He petted the long nose carefully. “There, my hayburning poop-factory. What does she know? She didn’t mean it. Born in a tin can in space, she was. No, no, don’t be wroth. Now, upsy daisy.”

  “What? Husband mine, your delirium is to have me, in all my fine and delicate satin, balance atop the spine of this outsized uncouth mammal? Am I an acrobat? Am I a cavegirl, to be juggled and bounced atop a zoo creature? Where are the brakes? Where is the safety setting? The whole system of muscles and veins—I speak now as a lady who has more than dabbled in engineering—seems to be directly controlled by the organic brain of a horse, with no manual override or direct interface. As a motile arrangement, ungainly, and less responsive than having the caterers carry me in a punchbowl.”

  “My strong right arm is your safety, my horsemanship your control.”

  “I shall look ridiculous.”

  “History books’ll clean it up, Rainy. ’Sides, if you look good to me, hang the world.”

  “I say I will not have it.”

  “And I say you will. Who is to be the man in my house, eh?” And with no further ado, he took her in one arm and swung her into the saddle, where Res Ipsa Nova, sensing her nervousness, danced and trembled. She emitted one short yelp of surprise, and clung to the mane; and the delighted crowd roared.

  Yorvel meshed his fingers and bent, as if to allow Menelaus a leg up. Menelaus ignored both Yorvel and the stirrup, but merely put his hands on the horse’s flanks and vaulted himself into the saddle, half-colliding with his mussed bride. Her coronet was askew, and the trailing lace in her hair was tangled, but Rania sat with straight posture, and favored the crowd with a wave of her gloved hand.

  “My master is a madman, and is too mad to know he is mad,” murmured Yorvel from about the level of Menelaus’s knee. “Do you know what I had to do to spread your bribes? The Schweizergarde were snickering in their mustachios. They never would have agreed to smuggle in your horse, except they are die-hard romantics. And you don’t treat your beast right: leaving him here in this heat with this caparison! And now you are going to double his load? He will buck you off, and you will fall on your royal buttocks, Master! The picture bugs will photograph it, and all the newsfeeds will show it, and add comic music as a soundtrack to the sidebar.”

  “Everyone needs a good laugh,” grunted Menelaus, tearing the loose, huge collar from his neck and flinging it into the air. “Now we’re fixing to take our French leave of this crowd, and shin out. Nova! Gid-YAWP!”

  And in a moment the steed, as the wind, flew past the pillar supporting a statue of Winged Independence, and his hoofbeats were the thunder. The bridal veils and white laces flowed behind, snapping bravely, shedding roses, and the bride clung tightly to her dark-faced, glittering-eyed groom. Perhaps she smiled, but her face was pressed to his chest. The crowd roared and parted, a frightened Red Sea.

  The beast was as magnificent a steed as modern genetic meddling could make him: so it was astonishing, but not impossible, when he cleared the heads of the onlookers at the end of the lane, made it over the pilings into a rich man’s garden, danced in a cloud of dust first down the steep slope of the mountainous terrain, and then galloped madly up the further slope, leaping from rock to sliding rock as nimbly as a goat, mane and tail like flame.

  All the photographers, both professional and merely curious, sent their bees flying after, but Quito was a city known for privacy, because the mountain winds often blew the tiny instruments astray. One or two bolder fellows, or more curious, followed on foot the trail of dust a few score yards down the slope, but gave up the chase as the sorrel’s long legs opened the distance on the uphill run, and the bride and groom were carried in a leap over the crest and out of sight. One man tried to follow on an antique petrol-powered motorcycle no doubt lent to him from a collector, but he had not practiced the old skills, and he left his machine in a heap when it struck a rock; hoots and whistles greeted him as he climbed painfully back up slope.

  The remaining members of the photography cadre, sitting atop their electric carriages with cameras and lens-tubes enough to equip a small astronomical observatory, exchanged lost shrugs and bewildered smiles. Meanwhile the mounted Swiss, the only men there truly able to see the horsemanship, good and bad, that Menelaus displayed, raised their swords and lances and shouted, “Acriter et Fideliter!”

  Yorvel laughed until he lost his breath, and sat on the ground, pulling a hip-flask of whiskey from underneath his borrowed uniform. “No woman is truly a bride until she is stolen away on horseback! That is what horses are for! Like in all the old tales! A magnificent gesture! Madness, like all magnificent gestures, of course. But a good madness, most needful and proper to the mental health: like the shock of a stiff drink, just the thing to put a man in his right spirits. It would be madness to be sane and sober on a day like this.” And he mopped his brow with his handkerchief, laughing and drinking and roaring with merriment until he wept.

  2. The Celestial Tower

  Above the city loomed the Celestial Tower; titanic, cyclopean, rising straight from the crown of a mountain and upward as far as the eye could see. It dwindled with perspective to a point, like a highway seen in the desert.

  Except that this, Menelaus thought, was surely a highway to the sky.

  Menelaus had been following the old railroad tracks for some time as the sun settled in a welter of red into the sea. Rania rode with her body leaning against his chest and, despite that the ride must have been uncomfortable, did not complain.

  It was dark now, and insects were singing. The scent of forest below the mountain slopes hung in the night air, and the distant chattering of animals could be heard. The city was still around them, but modern Patagonian cities were miraculously quiet: Menelaus noticed again the lack of the machine noise. It was also a splendor of lights, like constellations, down the slopes and underfoot. Here were Colonial-era buildings, held in spotlights for
the tourist trade: the Plaza de la Independencia, there were the many churches, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the old Archbishop’s Palace. In a world where a tourist could arrive from any continent in a matter of minutes, the beautiful places of the Earth were kept spotless. The light shone, and Menelaus felt as if he were treading the galaxy underfoot, or a carpet of diamond dust.

  The suburbs were like islands in the sky, with bridges linking the paved areas. But half a mile from any building in any direction might be found a sudden slope, rock and flints, not good for foundations. A high civilization merely a stone’s throw from empty wasteland.

  They were high. From here the volcanoes that punctured the mountains to each side of the city could not be seen, but Menelaus knew where they were. He could have found them in his sleep.

  Guagua Pichincha was westward, toward the sea; Cayambe Reventator was to the east; Chacana, Antisana, and Sumaco trailed away to the southeast; Cotopaxi was due south. In the distance, more than eighty miles away south, Tungurahua and Sangay. Far to the north, the peak of Galeras. All were active to some degree, with artificial vents opened to relieve pressure in a controlled fashion. Galeras was more active than the others, suffering a major burn that had been postponed for the wedding: now a plume of smoke like a second tower reached toward the stars, bending in the wind only a bit. Its upper reaches were torn and dissipated into grayish clouds. The lower parts looked so dark and sturdy, nearly the same color as the Celestial Tower, but as if built of smoke.

  The volcanoes unnerved him. Controlled? He hoped so, even though the old and worn systems of volcano-preemption were from the previous rulers of this place, older even that the Coptic Order, the Late Hispanosphere. It was the years Menelaus slept through, but still ancient history.

  Around him was a land of fire, cities perched on peaks moated by cliffs over empty air. The massive geothermal energy of the place was what allowed the Celestial Tower to be here.

  He reined his sorrel and looked up.

  The middle reaches of the tower, far above, were still blushed rose with the light of a distant sunset. This alpine glow made the tower seem to float, weightless in the twilit heavens, a supernatural apparition.

  Farther above, the towerlight was a vertical streak of yellow gold, where the upper regions were still in direct sunlight. And yet again above that, craning back his head and squinting, Menelaus could barely make out a harsher gleam, a glint, where the sun’s radiation, undiluted by any atmosphere, splashed onto the tower side in naked vacuum.

  The tower-top itself, the spaceport called Quito Alto, shined faint and distant at the very vanishing point of the perspective. Normally, it was not so bright as to be seen by the naked eye. Now, however, it outshined the evening star. It was a star that neither rose nor set.

  “Our honeymoon suite,” he said.

  She said, “I thought you would like to be near the canopy of space, my old home.”

  “When did they erect this?”

  “Never.”

  “What?”

  She giggled, a sound like silver chimes. “They lowered it. None of the weight sits on the ground. Seventy years ago, during the high point of Hispanosphere ascendancy. The King of Spain wanted an enduring monument to his tyranny, and he thought there would be traffic from a moonbase, asteroid mining, expeditions, and, yes, a colony on Ganymede or Titan.”

  “What happened?”

  “War interrupted.”

  “Which one?”

  Rania just shrugged. “The Yellow War.”

  “Which one was that? What was it about?”

  Rania spoke in a soft, haunted voice. “You may ask the survivors for details. Inspect your coffins dated between 2333–2338. Both sides experimented on captured civilian populations with RNA-spoofing. The bloated monstrosities and boneless knots of flesh were biosuspended, because there was no way to keep them alive. They are now your wards.” She looked up.

  Menelaus wore a puzzled frown, as if he had not realized that the fate of those slumbering souls was now his responsibility.

  She said, “Work on the tower slowed. It was maintained by private subscriptions for a while.”

  Menelaus gazed at the Celestial Tower. “And then?”

  “And then what? There is no ‘and then.’”

  “The tower is still there.”

  “Worthless to Earth,” she said, sadly.

  “The road to the stars!”

  “The road to nowhere. The moonbase was abandoned due to bone-sickness. No colony on Ganymede was ever founded. It would have cost less, and been a friendlier environment, to build a greenhouse at the bottom of the Arctic Sea, and farm that. But since the Patagonian, African, and Gobi wastelands were blooming for the first time since the Triassic … so who would bother? After the war, first one institution then another maintained it, despite the volcano danger here. The Third Era of Space could begin at any moment, since launch costs are, even now, as long as that tower stands, merely the cost of a spider car, one going up, one coming down. Oh, look!”

  He saw, high above, what seemed to be a meteor shower. For a moment or so, silver streaks of fire were falling to either side of the twilit, red-gold tower.

  “What is it?”

  “Decay. Fragments of ablative ceramic, from the upper structure, microscopic nano-tube fragments that have lost their Van der Waals adhesion. The tower is old, old, and its joints are stiff; its skin is peeling; upper sections suffer from sunburn and accumulated metal fatigue. It is a pendulum, you see, but the balancing governors are no longer in synch. I had been hoping your Pellucid would help us solve some of the calculation errors.”

  Pellucid was the name for his Van Neumann diamond project. He had finally decided on an environment where the machines could be released with minimal danger to the human race. The depthtrain system had given him the idea.

  Pellucid would be sent to govern a system for sensing and distributing pressures across the tectonics of Quito’s volcanic region. If it worked, Pellucid would be able to grow down the sides of old volcano vents, and spread as far and wide along the inner mantle of the Earth as need be, to gather valuable information about magma pressure systems as they formed. The more miles the diamond colony covered, the more calculating power it would have. Any single diamond, or any set of them, could be turned to any number of specialized functions as need dictated. The trick was to make them die on exposure to surface conditions.

  Rania was speaking softly. “The tower is a living thing. It breathes, pumping air up to the station; its heart pumps hydraulics and coolants; it sweats, after a fashion, to distribute heat across its skin; it has nerves to carry energy and sensations of stress and wind-shear from one part of its structure to another; and it moves, shifting weight, flexing, maintaining balance. I have always felt its sorrow, rooted to this spot of rock, its upper head in space.”

  “It is just standing there?”

  “Standing, no. It sways like a dancer: these inhabited sections at the bottom, the malls and parking warehouses are an anchor point.”

  “You know what I mean. It ain’t being used.”

  “But it is. The Torre Real was recently bought by my people, and renamed the Celestial Tower. I wanted to call it the Golf Tee, because of its shape, but my publicity consultants insisted on a more dignified name: I should have followed my instinct and saved myself their fees, because these days everyone calls it the Folly Tower.”

  Menelaus frowned when he heard that. “One of most ace-high bits of engineering this poxy race of man ever built, and they call it foolwork? Someone should make ’em regret that name. What if we set it to rights, put it back in business? We got the money.”

  “A noble dream,” she said, almost dismissively, but smiling. “Del Azarchel would have allowed it, had I married him, because then any increase in my power and authority would have increased his also. But now?”

  Montrose looked up. “I saw a flare.”

  “It is a correction burn. There is a tourist hotel at the sp
ot twelve miles up, clinging to the carbon nanotube tether proper. The cable swells from a one-centimeter diameter at the top of the anchor atop the base superscraper, to almost a hundred meters wide at the geostationary point. The tourist hotel is much lower than that, still inside the stratosphere. It was ordered closed many years ago.”

  He opened his mouth to ask why, and snapped it shut again. He knew why. Del Azarchel did not want people being too curious about outer space.

  He pointed at a cluster of lights, bright as a small city seen from orbit.

  He said, “Is that it?”

  “No, that is the spaceport itself, which is above the atmosphere. You cannot see from this angle, but the cable is bent to the west whenever a payload rides up, due to the differences in angular momentum of the spider car versus the various sections of cable—the horizontal increment of speed increases with altitude. The Hotel of Sorrow is not overhead, but hangs above the Pacific Ocean.”

  “If I had had a tower like this, hanging up, all shining over my head, I would not have waited for Del Azarchel and his bully boys to give me permission to mount up and go into space. I would have stormed the damn place, and forced my way aboard any vessels the spaceport could support! What happened to these people these days? Spineless as squids, I call ’em.”

  “Some cherish the long peace. Some fear a return of fire from heaven.”

  “Man shouldn’t be afraid. Men were bolder, life was better, in my time.”

  “Oho? Was it? So says a man who shot lawyers for a living, back in the good old days.” Her eyes twinkled with mirth.

  “There are some that envy me that job. I’ve heard it called a public service, shooting lawyers.” He had to smile.

  She did not let her smile show, but there was a lilt in her voice. “Let us excuse it on those grounds, then, and call it the practice of a more excitable era. But perhaps you will tell me more about why your people hanged Mormons?”

  “When they stole our women. But who cares who shot first? War changes people, and biowar makes ’em crazy. I weren’t around when the rumors flew that the Mormons were tainted, infected with Spore, and wouldn’t take blood transfusions needed to clean them. I heard stories from my aunt what those rumors did. The Burnings. It must never happen again.”