Next year, in its May 1987 issue, OMNI Magazine presented the piece to a rather wider audience, and White House Science Adviser Dr. George (Jay) A. Keyworth II was bombarded with copies from all his friends—who, for some obscure reason, thought it might be of interest to him . . .
We finally met in July 1988 at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Baltimore, where Jay, to my profound gratitude, had arranged for my admission. And I am equally grateful to Dr. Daniel Drachman, Director of the Neuro-Muscualr Unit of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and his able colleagues for cheering me with the news that my problem was not Lou Gehrig’s Disease but the considerably less ominous Post-Polio Syndrome. I still hope to make it to 2001 in fairly good shape.
And will I ever write any more real short stories? I simply don’t know; I’ve had no desire to do so for more than a decade, and regard A Meeting with Medusa (q.v.) as a pretty good swan-song. In any event, I’m going to have my hands full for the next few years working on a very ambitious Rama trilogy with my Cradle collaborator Gentry Lee, and on one novel of my own, currently titled The Ghost from the Grand Banks.
In any event, I don’t think I yet qualify for the cheeky description that appeared recently in an essay deploring the sad state of modern science fiction: “those famous undead—Clarke and Asimov.”
Needless to say, I gleefully sent this to my fellow Transylvanian, with the comment “Well, that’s a lot better than the alternative.”
I’m sure the good doctor will agree.
Arthur C. Clarke
Colombo, Sri Lanka: 9 November 1988
Contrary to the opinion of many so-called experts, it is now quite certain that President Kennedy’s controversial Budget Defense Initiative was entirely her own idea, and her famous “Cross of Gold” speech was as big a surprise to the O.M.B. and the secretary of the Treasury as to everyone else. Presidential Science Adviser Dr. George Keystone (“Cops,” to his friends) was the first to hear about it.
Ms. Kennedy, a great reader of historical fiction—past or future—had chanced upon an obscure novel about the fifth Centennial, which mentioned that seawater contains appreciable quantities of gold. With feminine intuition (so her enemies later charged) the President instantly saw the solution to one of her administration’s most pressing problems.
She was the latest of a long line of chief executives who had been appalled by the remorselessly increasing budget deficit, and two recent items of news had exacerbated her concern. The first was the announcement that by the year 2010 every citizen of the United States would be born a million dollars in debt. The other was the well-publicized report that the hardest currency in the free world was now the New York subway token.
“George,” said the President, “is it true that there’s gold in seawater? If so, can we get it out?”
Dr Keystone promised an answer within the hour. Although he had never quite lived down the fact that his master’s thesis had been on the somewhat bizarre sex life of the lesser Patagonian trivit (which, as had been said countless times, should be of interest only to another Patagonian trivit), he was now widely respected both in Washington and academe. This was no mean feat, made possible by the fact that he was the fastest byte slinger in the East. After accessing the global data banks for less than twenty minutes, he had obtained all the information the President needed.
She was surprised—and a little mortified—to discover that her idea was not original. As long ago as 1925 the great German scientist Fritz Haber had attempted to pay Germany’s enormous war reparations by extracting gold from seawater. The project had failed, but—as Dr. Keystone pointed out—chemical technology had improved by several orders of magnitude since Haber’s time. Yes—if the United States could go to the Moon, it could certainly extract gold from the sea. . . .
The President’s announcement that she had established the Budget Defense Initiative Organization (B.D.I.O.) immediately triggered an enormous volume of praise and criticism.
Despite numerous injunctions from the estate of Ian Fleming, the media instantly rechristened the President’s science adviser Dr. Goldfinger and Shirley Bassey emerged from retirement with a new version of her most famous song.
Reactions to the B.D.I. fell into three main categories which divided the scientific community into fiercely warring groups. First there were the enthusiasts, who were certain that it was a wonderful idea. Then there were the skeptics, who argued that it was technically impossible—or at least so difficult that it would not be cost-effective. Finally, there were those who believed that it was indeed possible—but would be a bad idea.
Perhaps the best known of the enthusiasts was the famed Nevermore Laboratory’s Dr. Raven, driving force behind Project EXCELSIOR. Although details were highly classified, it was known that the technology involved the use of hydrogen bombs to evaporate vast quantities of ocean, leaving behind all mineral (including gold) content for later processing.
Needless to say, many were highly critical of the project, but Dr. Raven was able to defend it from behind his smoke screen of secrecy. To those who complained, “Won’t the gold be radioactive?” he answered cheerfully, “So what? That will make it harder to steal! And anyway, it will be buried in bank vaults, so it doesn’t matter.”
But perhaps his most telling argument was that one by-product of EXCELSIOR would be several megatons of instant boiled fish, to feed the starving multitudes of the Third World.
Another surprising advocate of the B.D.I. was the mayor of New York. On hearing that the estimated total weight of the oceans’ gold was at least five billion tons, the controversial Fidel Bloch proclaimed, “At last our great city will have its streets paved with gold!” His numerous critics suggested that he start with the sidewalks so that hapless New Yorkers no longer disappeared into unplumbed depths.
The most telling criticisms came from the Union of Concerned Economists, which pointed out that the B.D.I. might have many disastrous by-products. Unless carefully controlled, the injection of vast quantities of gold would have incalculable effects upon the world’s monetary system. Something approaching panic had already affected the international jewelry trade when sales of wedding rings had slumped to zero immediately after the President’s speech.
The most vocal protests, however, had come from Moscow. To the accusation that B.D.I. was a subtle capitalist plot, the secretary of the Treasury had retorted that the U.S.S.R. already had most of the world’s gold in its vaults, so its objections were purely hypocritical. The logic of this reply was still being unraveled when the President added to the confusion. She startled everyone by announcing that when the B.D.I. technology was developed, the United States would gladly share it with the Soviet Union. Nobody believed her.
By this time there was hardly any professional organization that had not become involved in B.D.I., either pro or con. (Or, in some cases, both.) The international lawyers pointed out a problem that the President had overlooked: Who actually owned the oceans’ gold? Presumably every country could claim the contents of the seawater out to the two-hundred-mile limit of the Economic Zone—but because ocean currents were continuously stirring this vast volume of liquid, the gold wouldn’t stay in one place.
A single extraction plant, at any spot in the world’s oceans, could eventually get it all—irrespective of national claims! What did the United States propose to do about that? Only faint noises of embarrassment emerged from the White House.
One person who was not embarrassed by this criticism—or any other—was the able and ubiquitous director of the B.D.I.O. General Isaacson had made his formidable and well-deserved reputation as a Pentagon troubleshooter: perhaps his most celebrated achievement was the breaking up of the sinister, Mafia-controlled ring that had attempted to corner one of the most lucrative advertising outlets in the United States—the countless billions of sheets of armed-services toilet tissue.
It was the general who harangued the media and arranged demonstrations of the still-emerging B.D.I. technology. His p
resentation of gold—well, gold-plated—tie clips to visiting journalists and TV reporters was a widely acclaimed stroke of genius. Not until after they had published their fulsome reports did the media representatives belatedly realize that the crafty general had never said in as many words that the gold had actually come from the sea.
By then, of course, it was too late to issue any qualifications.
At the present moment—four years after the President’s speech and only a year into her second term—it is still impossible to predict the B.D.I.’s future. General Isaacson has set to sea on a vast floating platform looking, as Newsweek magazine put it, as if an aircraft carrier had tried to make love to an oil refinery. Dr. Keystone, claiming that his work was well and truly done, has resigned to go looking for the greater Patagonian trivit. And, most ominously, U.S. reconnaissance satellites have revealed that the U.S.S.R. is building perfectly enormous pipes at strategic points all along its coastline.
Arthur C. Clarke
Tales from Planet Earth
Copyright © 1990, 2000 Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
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1Not, I fear, original: I have seen versions credited to numerous sources. The President might have quoted Clarke’s First Law with at least equal effect: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he says it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
Table of Contents
About the Author
Preface
Preface Addendum
The Road to the Sea
Hate
Publicity Campaign
The Other Tiger
The Deep Range
“If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth . . .”
The Cruel Sky
The Parasite
The Next Tenants
Saturn Rising
The Man Who Ploughed the Sea
The Wall of Darkness
Death and the Senator
Maelstrom II
Second Dawn
On Golden Seas
1
Tales From Planet Earth Page 30
