by Jim Wurst
“Have you got anything?” Lilly asked her 360. Worth slowly pulled a small cylinder out of his pocket. “That’s not very large,” she noted.
“It disrupts attempts at eavesdropping for a five-meter radius. That’s enough for here. A more powerful device has too distinctive a signal. Anyone monitoring this signal would get the same reading you’d get from a thousand off-the-shelf privatizers.”
“The White House hasn’t leaked nothing yet. What do you suppose they are waiting for?”
“Maybe they want more data, waiting for a more politically expeditious moment, maybe they won’t use a state secret for political advantage…” Even Lilly couldn’t give the benefit of a doubt on that one. “… I suppose that’s not likely.”
“I’ve been thinking more about this, doing a bit of research. When you first saw it, did you think ‘telescope’?”
“Of course, it’s a classic shape. But no one has built an earth-based telescope of that size in decades. They can’t compete with the space-and-Moon-based telescopes. And even if it was, why would the Chinese make such a big deal about hiding it? No, I dismissed that notion out of hand.”
“So did I, for the same reasons. But what if it’s not a telescope but that it telescopes?”
“Meaning that it extends. That’s certainly possible, but that makes it even more unlikely to be a weapon. Each section of the cylinder has to be even thinner that the whole. The thinnest metal would never withstand a firing of any military value. That only works if they have a new alloy. There are several promising ores being found on the Moon. But it’s impossible for China to have gotten enough ore and successfully developed a new alloy and applied it in such a practical manner in so short a time.”
“So, we still maintain that’s not likely to be a weapon. But what if whatever comes out of it is not a weapon? There have been plenty of attempts over the decades to reduce global pollution by firing sulfur or other aerosols into the atmosphere. What if the Chinese Device is a variation on an old idea?”
“Hardly worthy of so much secrecy,” Worth argued.
“They are very secretive. We might decide that they would brag about such an experiment, but they don’t think that way. Their instinct is for secrecy.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“We could change our perspective again. What if nothing comes out of the appendage; what if something comes in?”
“A sensor? You’re running out of hands.”
“Possibly. On both counts.”
“Sensing what? Zhidoi has high pollution, you don’t need a super-secret sensor to figure that out.”
“Radiation?”
“What kind? We can already detect every known radiation. Unless they are planning to create a new radiation and want their own detector. In which case, we’re not looking at a weapon itself but an auxiliary to a weapon.”
“Careful, you’re getting into O’Brien territory there creating facts that fit your prejudices. We don’t know what the Chinese Device is and you’re creating another secret weapon where there’s zero evidence that it exists.”
“I recreated the schematic from your, mine and Sean’s notes and gave it, and one small piece of research to interns and staffers in Washington, and Chapel Hill. They do not understand how it fits into the bigger picture, and just as importantly, no one spying would know unless they knew what everyone was doing. I don’t see too much that helps us. That big picture is on the data chip taped to the bottom of the water bottle. Probably best to transport it by hand to Sean as soon as possible.”
“Fine. Elena is going back to Washington tonight.”
The meeting was over. They didn’t know what they had told anyone else.
CHAPTER 30
Mrs. Anderson arrived the next morning at dawn. Mrs. Ullman wasn’t sure how long she had been buzzing, she was still groggy from the pill. She cautiously opened her bedroom door, looked around especially on the floor saw nothing unusual, and proceeded downstairs. Mrs. Anderson came in with a case of cleaning products.
“Everything alright?”
“It was noisy for a while. I had no idea they could scream like that.”
“Sorry, I should have warned you. Are there any remnants?”
“I haven’t looked.”
Entering the living room, they noticed some smaller pieces of furniture had moved. There were a few blotches of blood on the carpet.
With the familiar snap of the fingers, Mrs. Anderson said, “Arnold, come.”
Arnold slowly emerged from his portable cave, kicking animal bits ahead of him. He hunched over the prize, guarding remnants of his prey. Some piece of a tail, some bloody fur, two heads the size of Mrs. Ullman’s fist. They were rats, of course. They both knew they were talking about rats. “Mice” is a gentler word, little furry things out in the field, nibbling cutely on the grass. These were rats, with all the history of disease and ugliness trailing behind the word like the plague.
Mrs. Anderson scooped up the ugly bits with pinchers and deposited them in a plastic bag. She sprayed what was probably disinfectant on the carpet and turned to Mrs. Ullman, “I’ll let that set and clean it up soon.” What “it” was, the two women wordlessly decided that part of the conversation was over. She snapped again. “Arnold, more.” Arnold strode with the confidence of a professional who knows he has done his job well towards the open cellar door. He let the humans catch up, and then he bounded down the stairs. He led Mrs. Anderson to a dark corner. Directing the flashlight on the spot, she took out the pinchers and plastic bag. She pulled something out of the darkness and dropped it in the bag. Then she sprayed the spot.
“There was a nest,” she remarked. Mrs. Ullman didn’t press for details.
Back upstairs, Mrs. Anderson checked around the kitchen and the rest of the ground floor, occasionally scrubbing or spraying a particular spot. Mrs. Ullman chose not to follow and waited in the living room with Arnold plopped down in front of his carrier.
Mrs. Anderson took out a ball of something and rolled it towards Arnold. Suddenly, the killer was a kitty and batted the ball around a bit before eating it.
“Trout, catnip, and some herbs,” Mrs. Anderson answered the unasked question, “It cleans the palate, so to speak.”
Without prompting, Arnold walked into his carrier and laid down. Mrs. Anderson snapped the door shut.
“I don’t think we will have to come back tonight.”
CHAPTER 31
Sanjeet Chaudhry swam deep among the fish, turtles and sea lions. No scuba gear, only fins, a mask and snorkel. As much as a seal as a man, he languidly crisscrossed the sea, deeper and longer than a human should. As the director of the Galapagos Islands’ Darwin Recovery Station, he knew full well what was down there or more to the point, what was not down there, but this was always a good excuse for getting away from the computers.
Although isolated from the continents and subject of intensive conservation efforts, the Galapagos were still islands and subject to the global changes in oceans and the atmosphere. The changing ocean currents and the increase in El Niño conditions of warmer and wetter storms had a daily impact on the millennia-old balance on the islands. The coral reefs had not been subjected to the same abuse as those closer to industry and shipping, but they were suffering the same fate of bleaching and starvation.
The combination of traditional El Niños and accelerating climate change made the islands much wetter and warmer that in the past. The wet season was longer and wetter while the cool season needed by the coral reefs, fish, and some land animals like tortoises to replenish their food supply and aid in reproduction shortened. Coral reefs lost nutrients and were subject to warmer and more acidic water, meaning they died and the sea life dependent on the reefs also declined. Some years the weather was so wet, the eggs of tortoises and iguanas in effect drowned. Bird nests disintegrated. Several species of cacti be
came too waterlogged to survive.
He swam clear of the wave generators. The generators converted wave action into electricity and desalinated water, enough of both to take care of all the islands’ needs. This wasn’t the best place for such generators, they worked best near the coastlines of continents where the seabed was not so deep, and the tidal actions were stronger. Placing them at the Galapagos was not a unanimous decision: the sharp drop-off of the ocean floor meant they had to be so close to land that they might interfere with sea creatures. But solar wasn’t providing enough and wind turbines most definitely caused problems for birds. The desalination aspect was the deciding factor: everyone needed water.
Still officially a possession of Ecuador, the central government swallowed its nationalist pride and agreed to share maintenance of the islands with an international consortium of nations, scientific institutions and the UN. On its own, Ecuador controlled human population, invasive species, logging and overfishing, but alone it could not deal with the rapid deterioration of this gem of the oceans. There were dozens of tiny islands in the archipelago, some only pebbles in the ocean. Saving them was impossible, so scientists tried to resettle as many animals as possible to other islands, leaving these pebbles to their fate.
As always, the greatest threat were humans. People had lived on the islands for more than two hundred years. Population growth and the damage that accompanied that destroyed plants and animals. Over-fishing depleted the stocks around the islands. Foreign species overran the indigenous. Fortunately, there was no repeat of what sailors and pigs did to the dodo, but it got close. As climate change continued to weaken the islands, they addressed the most aggressive invasive species. The most controversial decision was to depopulate the islands. Fortunately, there was no such person as an indigenous Galapagonian, so there was no Trial of Tears. From a peak of some 25,000 people in 2010, by 2052 only 5,000 humans called the Galapagos home. That didn’t include the hundreds of foreigners working on various conservation, adaptation and educational projects. But these projects now employed hundreds of those 5,000. Humans retreated to just three of the islands Santa Cruz, Isabela and San Cristobal. There were a few small fishing villages on the outer islands to accommodate seasonal work, but no one lived there permanently.
In the 2030s, science bested fishing as the second major employer. Number one was the tourist industry. But tourism, no matter how “eco” was also curtailed. The size and number of ships and planes allowed to come steadily decreased over the years. Eco-tourism was the major source of income for the economy, especially after the fishing stocks collapsed, but with fewer people to support, the need for tourist money decreased. The human footprint on the islands had decreased dramatically, but it was too late. All the efforts on the Galapagos centered on one question: how long can we delay the collapse?
Sanjeet Chaudhry knew all of this. As chief of the Darwin Recovery Station for the last ten years, he was a part of that living history. But he wasn’t thinking about all of that so much. Finally, nature made its ultimate demand, and he surfaced, gasping not only for air but out of sorrow. Despite all the scientific gear loaded into the boat, he had used none of it. As he lifted himself into his boat, all he thought about was that the waters had died a little more.
CHAPTER 32
As sea-levels rose, the great coastal cities had three choices: build seawalls and other protective barriers, move the city inland, or abandon the city. Rich cities including New York and Singapore built seawalls; others moved inland; some cities, including Miami, New Orleans and Accra because of a combination of geography and weather were abandoned.
Shanghai has special problems. It was at sea level and the coast had been developed up with billions of dollars’ worth of high rises, the Yangtze River was bloated, the surrounding land around it riddled with smaller rivers, lakes and wetlands that became saturated with salt water both from the rising sea level and salination of the aquifer. The city was being hit from the front, back and underground. The first line of defense had been the same as any city seawalls, breakers and artificial dunes built out to create buffers between the rising sea and the gold-plated real estate. They performed triage.
Changxingxiang and the smaller islands were abandoned. When that proved to be a stop-gap solution, Shanghai both pushed inland and eliminated some of that land. The inland cities of Suzhou and Huzhou were now part of “Shanghai” while the network of tiny lakes around Taihu and Yangcheng Lakes and the Baixian were expanded with canals built to control the aggressive water. They sacrificed huge chunks of land to protect the rear flank of the city. Everything was secondary to maintaining the history, the pride, and the money of Shanghai.
Shanghai also looked to Tokyo for solutions. Understanding what was coming before coal-addicted China did, Japan planned a strategy to build out into the water. In effect, the idea was not to run from the water but to adapt to it. Unlike Shanghai and – for a time before it became impossible – Miami, rather than bulking up its rear guard, Tokyo reinvented the harbor. The city had been creating new land in the harbor for decades, so it wasn’t much of a stretch. The difference was that the new islands were hexagonal, so they would be both resistant to killer waves and be able to channel and thus weaken the waves before they hit the rest of the city. They were both pawns and knights.
Building high remained an obsession worldwide, and that included Shanghai. Not all the skyscrapers from the beginning of the 21st century survived. It wasn’t the sky that was the problem, but the shifting land now more like a giant sponge upon which they built them. New construction inland had strict height limits. Some of those restrictions had nothing to do with climate change. They forbade consulates and other buildings belonging to foreign governments to be taller than ten stories, which meant there were many massive towers around from which the government could look down on their guests. Walls and roofs were thick and embedded with alloys and polymers designed to scramble a variety of spying methods, including self-contained bubbles of spy-proof accommodations for particularly sensitive discussion. At the moment, one of those bubbles was being used by two diplomats: Harry Cheng, the first minister, and Erica Mosel, a science attaché.
Cheng began the briefing. “This is a follow up from the last report on the Chinese Device. One of our better-known drunks let something slip last night at a reception in Beijing. We know a German heard it, maybe a Russian. Our people stand pat in Beijing, with luck they will move their people from Beijing while we move in from Shanghai. The Chinese will figure one of us doesn’t know what they are doing but won’t know which one for a while.”
“What’s stopping them from stopping all of us?”
“On what grounds? It’s a not a closed city. That’s why you were selected for this, your cover is seismology a dozen obvious reasons for visiting the Tanglha Mountains.”
“Is our man there still alive?”
“Bio-readings say yes. He could be in a coma. Too bad for him, but a break for us. There’s no sign that the Chinese have figured out who he works for.”
“Am I going to be the only American on the scene?”
“The only one of us. There are a few civilian medical and agricultural personnel there, anyway. It’s be easy to steer clear of them.”
Tall, blonde, and Germanic, Mosel did not scream “blend in” in China. She used her uniqueness to play the counter-intuitive card “Her? She’s a spy? Are you joking?” Combined with a gift for languages, being a quick study, and knowing some science, Cheng decided she was right for the job. It wasn’t exactly as if the Chinese weren’t already watching to see which country was giving off signals it had been on the receiving end of that transmission. “What exactly am I supposed to find out?”
“Unusual movements of industrial or military convoys. The Roosevelt will check for any spikes in heat, radiation or energy from the device. It might catch large convoys, but that’s not likely. I’ll coordinate with you to see if the rea
dings from space match any observations you make.”
“Radiation?” That was one word feared in all languages.
“Just a possibility. Nothing shows any radioactive component to the device.”
“How close can I get to the plant?”
“Nowhere close for the moment. We have a couple of locals eyeballing it, but they’re getting nervous so they may disappear any day. We can’t risk giving them any sensitive equipment, so that’s your job. They have a dead drop; you never contact them everything passes through me.”
CHAPTER 33
Peter’s office was a mass of computers and consoles, ranging from antique 1980s to the cutting edge. Not only was he a 360, but he was a military 360, meaning he access to more gadgets than most people would want or need. Ike walked in and handed him a relic from the beginning of the century with a USB stick.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked Peter.
“Sure,” Peter answered, “It’s a type of data storage devise. Went out of use about 20 years ago. Is this what was in that box from your father?”
“Yes.”
“What’s on it?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me. The technology is too old for my computer.”
Peter examined the drive and checked for the proper plug. “This should be it.” He plugged it in, touched a few keys and a menu of eight files appeared on the screen.
“What are we looking at?”
“Data files. Eight files roughly the same size. Any idea what’s on them?”
“No.”
“Ok, only one way to find out.” He tapped on the first file. The Air Force seal took over the screen. A digital clock began a countdown from 10 seconds. Below the seal were the words: “USAF Command Master Record: August 9, 2037.”
The two Air Force professionals felt the cold tingle of history grab their necks. “2037,” they whispered in unison. “August 9. The day of the Satellite War,” Ike said, even though they both knew it.
