Athena said, “I was made welcome at Cyclops. I was protected there. But I was born to run the shield, born to be here. Of course I, this copy of me, have no memory of the sunstorm itself. It is actually educational for me to be here, to access the data stores. To learn what happened that day, as if I were any other visitor. It is humbling.”
“And may I humbly ask,” Bob Paxton asked sourly, “why the fuck you have dragged us all up here?” It was the first time he had spoken since coming aboard.
Bella laid her hand flat on the table, a gentle gesture that nevertheless commanded their attention. “Because this is neutral ground for Earthborn and Spacers, or as near as I could come up with.
Somehow we seem to have gotten through the Q-bomb crisis, though we fought like cats in a sack in the process. Well, now we need a new way of getting along.”
Alexei said, “I heard you’re standing down after Christmas.”
“More than that,” Paxton growled. “Madam Chair here is probably going to face a war crimes tribunal. As, in fact, am I.”
Lyla frowned. “But what of the attacks on the elevators? Who’s going to be held responsible for that?”
“I am happy to stand trial,” Athena said firmly, “if it will protect those whose actions I influenced.”
Alexei laughed. “They can’t put an AI on trial.”
“Of course they can,” Bella said. “Athena has rights. She is a Legal Person (Non-Human). But with rights come responsibilities.
She can be tried, just as much as I can be. Though I don’t think anybody has worked out what her sentence might be, if she’s found guilty…”
Athena said, “These trials will be played out in full public view, before courts representing both Earth and Spacer communities.
Whatever the outcome I hope it will be part of the reconciliation process. The healing.”
Bella said, “We all did what we thought we had to do. But that’s all in the past. The Q-bomb changed everything. It’s all different now.”
Lyla studied her curiously. “Different how?”
“For one thing, the politics…”
The species-wide debate forced by Athena on the decision to deflect the bomb had been a brief, traumatic shock to the political system. Perhaps it was a culmination of tensions that had been building up for decades among an increasingly interconnected mankind. Afterward, it hadn’t proven possible to shut down the debate.
“Everything is fluid, since the vote. There are new factions, new interest and protest groups, new sorts of lobbies. On Earth the last barriers between the old nations are being kicked down. Across the system people are ignoring the old categories, and are uniting with others with whom they find common cause, whichever world they happen to live on. An interconnected democracy is taking over, a mass, self-correcting wisdom, whether we like it or not.
Maybe it was good that our first great exercise in using our collective voice was over something we could pretty much unite around — in the end, perhaps, the Firstborn have done us a favor.
But that voice hasn’t been stilled.”
Alexei faced his father. “Look, Dad. Things have got to change in space, too. I mean the relationship between Spacers and Earth.”
“Between you and me, you mean,” said Bill Carel.
“That too. The idea that Earth can impose its will on space is a fantasy, no matter how many antimatter warships you build.”
In December 2070, there had been no declaration of independence; there were no Spacer nations, and at present all Spacers were colonists, formally owing their allegiance to one of Earth’s old nations or another. The Spacers had their own internal rivalries, of course. But as they looked back to an Earth reduced to a blue lamp in the sky, if they could see it at all, it was increasingly difficult for them to think of themselves as American Spacers versus Albanian, British Spacers versus Belgian…
“ ‘Spacer’ is an absurd label, really. A negative one that actually means ‘not of Earth.’ We’re all different, and we all have our own opinions.”
“You got that right,” Bob Paxton growled. “More opinions than fucking Spacers.”
“My point is, you can’t control us anymore. We can’t even control ourselves — and wouldn’t want to. We’re on a new road, Dad, and even we don’t know where it will lead.”
“Or what you will become,” said Carel. “But I have to let you go come what may, don’t I?”
Alexei smiled. “I’m afraid so.”
And there, Bella knew, was the subtext in the conversation between Earth and Spacers. If the mother world released her grip, she would lose her children forever.
Bob Paxton grunted. “Christ, I feel like blubbing.”
“All right, Bob,” Bella said. “Look, it’s a serious point. One of my last executive orders will be to initiate a new constitutional convention for all of us — Earth and the whole solar system—
based on recognized human rights precedents. We do not want a world government, I don’t think. What we do need are new mechanisms, new political forms to recognize the new fluidity. No more power centers,” she said. “No more secrets. We still need mechanisms to unify us, to ensure justice and equality of resource and opportunity — and fast-response agencies when crises hit.”
“Such as when the Firstborn take another swipe,” Paxton said.
“Yes. But we need ways to cope with threats without sacrificing our liberties.” She looked around at their faces, open or cynical.
“We have no precedent for how a civilization spanning several worlds is supposed to run itself. Maybe the Firstborn know; if they do they aren’t telling. I like to think that this is the next stage in our maturity as a culture.”
“Maturity? That sounds utopian,” Bill Carel said cautiously.
Bob Paxton grunted. “Yeah. And let’s just remember that however many heads you Spacer mutants grow, we’re all going to continue to be united by one thing.”
“The Firstborn,” Lyla said.
“Damn right,” Paxton said.
“Yes,” said Bella. “So take us through the new proposals, Bob.
The next phase of Fortress Sol.”
He looked at her, alarmed. “You sure about that, Madam Chair?”
“Openness, Bob. That’s the watchword now.” She smiled at the others. “Bob and his Committee of Patriots have been working on priorities. Even though their own legal status is under review, following events.”
Alexei smiled. “Can’t keep you old sky warriors down, eh, Admiral Paxton?”
Paxton looked ready to murder him. Bella laid a hand on his arm until he had calmed.
“Very well. Priority one. We need to act now. Between the sunstorm and the Q-bomb we had a generation to prepare. Granted we didn’t know what was coming. But in retrospect we didn’t do enough, and we can’t make that mistake again. The one good thing about the Q-bomb is the way it’s going to mobilize public opinion and support for such measures.
“Priority two. Earth. A lot of us were shaken up when you ragged-ass Spacers snipped the space elevators. We always knew how vulnerable you were in your domes and butterfly spaceships.
We didn’t know how vulnerable Earth was, though. The fact is we’re interconnected to a spaceborne economy. So we’re talking about robustifying Earth.”
Lyla grinned. “Nice word.”
“Homes like bunkers. Ground-based power sources, comms links, via secure optic-fiber cables. That kind of thing. Enough to withstand a planetary siege. Parameters to be defined.
“Priority three. And here’s the key,” Paxton said now, leaning forward, intent. “We got to disperse. We’ve got significant colonies off Earth already. But the wargamers say that if Earth had been taken out by the Q-bomb, it’s unlikely the Spacer colonies could have survived into the long term. Just too few of you, a gene pool too small, your fake ecologies too fragile, all of that.
“So we have to beef you up. Make the species invulnerable even to the loss of Earth.” He grinned at th
e young Spacers. “I’m talking massive, aggressive migration. To the Moon, the outer planet moons, space habs if we can put them up fast enough. Even Venus, which was so fucked over by the sunstorm it might be possible to live there. Maybe we can even start flinging a few ships to the stars, go chase those Chinese.”
“But it won’t work,” Alexei said. “Not even if you have a million people on Venus, say, under domes, and breathing machine air.
They’ll be just as vulnerable as we are now.”
“Sure. So we go further.” Paxton’s grin widened. He seemed to be enjoying shocking them. “Nice to know an old fart like me is still capable of thinking bigger than you kids. What’s the most robust hab we know? A planet.”
Lyla stared at him. “You’re talking of terraforming.”
“Making the Moon or Venus into worlds enough like Earth that you could walk around in the open, more or less unprotected.
Where you could grow crops in the open air. Where humans could survive, even if civilization fell, even if they forgot who they were and how they got there in the first place.”
“They’ve been thinking about this on Mars,” Lyla said. “Of course now—”
“We’ll lose Mars, but Mars wasn’t the only option. In the very long term it’s the only robust survival solution,” Paxton said.
Alexei looked skeptical. “This is the kind of program space ad-vocates have been pressing for since the days of Armstrong and Aldrin, and never got close to. It’s going to mean a massive transfer of resources.”
“Oh, yes,” Bella said. “In fact Bob’s view is already widely accepted. And it’s going to start soon.”
“What is?” Lyla asked, curious.
“You’ll see. Leave me one last surprise…”
“We’re serious about this,” Bob Paxton said, challenging, au-thoritative. “As serious as I’ve been about anything in my entire life.
To gain access to the future, we have to secure the present. That’s the bottom line.”
They fell back to talking over details of Paxton’s vision, argu-ing, fleshing out some aspects, rejecting others. Soon Paxton cleared the tabletop of its colorful sunstorm factoids and started to make notes.
Bella murmured to Athena, “Looks like it worked. I would never have thought I’d see the likes of Bob Paxton and Alexei Carel working together.”
“We live in strange times.”
“That we do, Athena. And they get stranger all the time. Anyhow it’s a start.” She glanced at her watch. “I hate to do it, but I ought to go check through my messages. Athena, will you bring them coffee? Anything they want.”
“Of course.”
She pushed herself out of her chair and drifted off the bridge, heading for the shuttle and her secure softscreens. Behind her the conversation continued, animated. She heard Alexei say, half-seriously, “I tell you what will unite us all. Sol Invictus. A new god for a new age…”
54: Q-Day
December 15, 2070
The shuttle landed Bella at Cape Canaveral.
Thales spoke to her. “Welcome home, Bella.”
Bella, bent over her softscreen, was startled to find she was down. All the way from L1 she had been working her messages, and monitoring the progress of the two great events that were due to take place today: the switching-on of the Bimini, the new space elevator system in the Atlantic, and the closest approach of the Q-bomb to the Earth. Both were on schedule, as best anybody knew. But it was hard not to keep checking.
The wheels stopped rolling, and the shuttle’s systems sighed to silence.
She shut down her softscreen and folded it up. “Thank you, Thales. Nice to be back. Athena sends her regards.”
“I’ve spoken to her several times.”
That made Bella oddly uneasy. She had often wondered what conversations went on between the great artificial intelligences, all above the heads of mankind. Even in her role as Council Chair, she had never fully found out.
“There’s a car waiting for you outside, Bella. Ready to take you to the VAB, where your family is waiting. Be careful when you stand up.”
It still hurt to be returned to a full gravity. “It gets tougher every damn time. Thales, remind me to order an exoskeleton.”
“I will, Bella.”
She clambered down to the runway. The day was bright, the sun low, the air fresh and full of salt. She checked her watch, which had corrected itself to local time; she had landed a little before ten a.m. on this crisp December morning.
She glanced out to sea, where a fine vertical thread climbed into the sky.
Thales murmured, “Just an hour to the Q-bomb pass, Bella.
The astronomers report no change in its trajectory.”
“Orbital-mechanics analyses are all very well. People have to see it.”
“I’ve encountered the phenomenon before,” Thales said calmly.
“I do understand, Bella.”
She grunted. “I’m not sure if you do. Not if you call it a ‘phenomenon.’ But we all love you anyhow.”
“Thank you, Bella.”
A car rolled up, a bubble of glass, smart and friendly. It whisked her away from the cooling hulk of her shuttle, straight toward the looming bulk of the Vehicle Assembly Building.
At the VAB she was met by a security guard, a woman, good humored but heavily armed, who shadowed her from then on.
Bella crossed straight to a glass-walled elevator, and rose quickly and silently up through the interior of the VAB. She stared down over rockets clustered like pale trees. Once the rocket stacks of Saturn s and space shuttles had been assembled in this building.
Now a century old and still one of the largest enclosed volumes in the world, the VAB had been turned into a museum for the launchers of the first heroic age of American manned space exploration, from the Atlas to the shuttle and the Ares. And now the building was operational again. A corner had been cleared for the assembly of an Apollo — Saturn stack: a new Apollo 14, ready for its centennial launch in February.
Bella loved this immense temple of technology, still astonishing in its scale. But today she was more interested in who was waiting for her on the roof.
Edna met her as she stepped out of the elevator car. “Mum.”
“Hello, love.” Bella embraced her.
As Bella and Edna walked the security guard shadowed them, and a news robot rolled after them, a neat sphere glistening with lenses. Bella had to expect that; she did her best to ignore the silent, all-encompassing scrutiny. It was an historic day, after all. By scheduling the Bimini switch-on today, she had meant to turn Q-day into one of celebration, and so it was turning out to be — even if, she sensed, the mood was edgy rather than celebratory right now.
The tremendous roof of the VAB had long since been made over as a viewing platform. Today it was crowded, with marquees, a podium where Bella would be expected to make a speech, people swirling around. There was even a small park, a mock-up of the local flora and fauna.
Two oddly dressed men, spindly, tall, in blue-black robes marked with golden sunbursts, stared at a baby alligator as if it were the most remarkable creature they had ever seen, and perhaps it was. Looking a little uncertain on their feet, their faces heavily creamed with sunscreen, they were monks of the new church of Sol Invictus: missionaries to Earth from space.
Edna walked with the caution of a space worker restored to a full gravity, and she winced a bit in the brilliant light, the breeze, the uncontrolled climate of a living world. She looked tired, Bella thought with her mother’s solicitude, older than her twenty-four years.
“You aren’t sleeping well, are you, love?”
“Mum, I know we can’t talk about this right now. But I got my subpoenas yesterday. For your hearing and my own.”
Bella sighed. She had fought to keep Edna from having to face a tribunal. “We’ll get through it.”
“You mustn’t think you need to protect me,” Edna said, a bit stiffly. “I did my duty, Mum. I’d do the sa
me again, if ordered.
When I get my day in court I’ll tell the truth.” She forced a smile.
“Anyway the hell with it all. Thea’s longing to see you. We’ve made camp, a bit away from the marquees and the bars…”
Edna had colonized an area of the VAB roof close to the edge.
It was perfectly safe, blocked in by a tall, inward-curving wall of glass. Edna had spread out picnic blankets and fold-out tables and chairs, and had opened up a couple of hampers. Cassie Duflot was already here, with her two kids, Toby and Candida. They were playing with Thea, Edna’s daughter, Bella’s four-year-old granddaughter.
In this corner of the VAB roof it was Christmas, Bella saw to her surprise. The kids, playing with toys, were surrounded by wrapping paper and ribbons. There was even a little pine tree in a pot. An older man in a Santa suit sat with them, a bit awkwardly, but with a grin plastered over his tired face.
Thea came running. “Grannie!”
“Hello, Thea.” Bella submitted to having her knees hugged, and then she bent down and cuddled her granddaughter properly. The other kids ran to her too, perhaps vaguely remembering the nice old lady who had come with a memento to their father’s funeral. But the kids soon broke away and went back to their presents.
Santa Claus shook Bella’s hand. “John Metternes, Madam Chair,” he said. “I flew with your daughter on the Liberator. ”
“Yes, of course. I’m very glad to meet you, John. You did good work up there.”
He grunted. “Let’s hope the judge agrees. Look, I hope you don’t think I’m butting in — I can see there’s a family thing going on here—”
“I forced him down for some shore leave,” Edna said, a bit acidly. “This weird old obsessive would sleep on the Liberator if the maintenance crew would let him.”
“Don’t let her bug you, John. It’s good of you to do this. But —
Christmas, Edna? It’s only the fifteenth of December.”
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