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Not until Cornelius Taine told her about it.
About that, and a lot more besides.
‘… Ms Stoney.’
The voice was soft, dry, and it startled her. Emma straightened up from her softscreen.
There was a man standing before her, here in the pastel light of her Las Vegas office: a thin Caucasian, 1980s pinstripe suit, neatly cropped hair. ‘I surprised you. I’m sorry. My name’s Cornelius,’ he said. ‘Cornelius Taine.’
Neutral accent. Boston? He looked about forty. She saw no sign of cosmetic enhancement. High cheekbones. Stress muscles around his eyes.
How the hell had he gotten in here?
She reached for the security touchpad under her desk. ‘I didn’t notice you come in.’
He smiled. He seemed calm, rational, business-like. She lifted her finger off the button.
He stretched out his hand and she shook it; his palm was dry and soft, as if even his perspiration was under control. But she didn’t enjoy the touch. Like handling a lizard, she thought. She let go of the hand quickly.
She said, ‘Have we met before?’
‘No. But I know of you. Your picture is in the company reports. Not to mention the gossip sites, from time to time. Your complicated personal history with Reid Malenfant –’
He was making her uncomfortable. ‘Malenfant is kind of high profile,’ she conceded.
‘You call him Malenfant.’ He nodded, as if storing away the fact.
‘You’re with the corporation, Mr Taine?’
‘Actually it’s Doctor. But please, call me Cornelius.’
‘Medical doctor?’
‘The other sort.’ He waved a hand. ‘Academic. Mathematics, actually. A long time ago. Yes, in a manner of speaking, I am with Bootstrap. I represent one of your major shareholder groups. That’s what got me past your very conscientious secretary in the outer office.’
‘Shareholders? Which group?’
‘We work through a number of dummies.’ He looked at her desk. ‘No doubt when you get back to your softscreen you’ll soon be able to determine which, and the extent of our holdings. Ultimately, I work for Eschatology, Inc.’
Oh, shit. Eschatology, as far as she knew, was one of those UFO-hunting nut groups which were attracted to Malenfant’s enterprises like flies.
He watched her, apparently knowing what she was thinking. ‘Why are you here, Dr Taine?’
‘Cornelius, please. Naturally we wish to check on how your husband is using our money.’
‘Ex-husband. You can do that through the company reports or the press.’
He leaned forward. ‘But I don’t recall any news releases about this waste-reduction enterprise in the Mojave.’
‘You’re talking about the rocket plant. It’s a new project,’ she said vaguely. ‘Speculative.’
He smiled. ‘Your loyalty is admirable. But you’ve no need to defend Malenfant, Ms Stoney. I’m not here to criticize or obstruct. Divert, perhaps.’
‘Divert what?’
‘The trajectory of Reid Malenfant’s covert activities. I’m talking about his true purpose, beneath all the misdirection.’
‘True purpose?’
‘Come now. You don’t think anyone believes an entrepreneur with Malenfant’s track record is reconditioning man-rated rocket engines just to burn industrial waste, do you?…’ He studied her. Or perhaps you truly don’t know the truth. How remarkable. In that case we both have much to learn.’ He smiled easily. ‘We believe Malenfant’s motives are sound – that’s why we invest in him – although his objectives are too narrow. I saw his speech in Delaware the other night. Impressive stuff: colonizing the Galaxy, immortality for mankind. Of course, he hasn’t thought it through.’
‘Would you believe me if I said I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He eyed her. His eyes were a pale blue, the colour of the skies of her California childhood, long gone. ‘Yes, now that I’ve met you, I believe you. Perhaps we understand your ex-husband better than you do.’
‘And what is it you understand about him?’
‘That he’s the only man who can save the human race from the coming catastrophe.’ He said it without inflection.
She had absolutely no idea how to reply. The moment stretched.
Once more she wondered if this man was dangerous.
On impulse, she decided to cancel the rest of her day and drive out to Malenfant’s desert operation. Maybe, all things considered, it was time to see it for herself. And she invited Cornelius along for the ride.
She called ahead to let Malenfant know she was on the way. But, working on the principle that she should never miss a chance to make Malenfant’s life more difficult, she didn’t warn him about Cornelius Taine.
Out of Vegas she took the I-15, the main route to LA three hundred miles away. Out of town she was able to cut in the SmartDrive. The car’s limiter, controlled by the invisible web of satellites far above, switched out as the automatic control took over, and her speed rose smoothly through a hundred and fifty miles per hour.
As the sun climbed, the air grew hotter. She rolled up her window, felt the air conditioning cool and moisten the air.
Without warning Cornelius said, as if resuming an interrupted conversation, ‘Yes, the Delaware speech was interesting. But something of a throwback for Malenfant. He’s usually much more discreet about his true ambitions …’
When Malenfant had first started making money, as a small-scale aerospace consultant, he had spread himself over the media arguing for an expansion of American effort in space: a new generation of heavy launchers, new manned vehicles, a return to the Moon. He talked about the riches waiting in space, escape from Malthusian limits to growth, the ability to save the species from such calamities as an asteroid collision with the Earth, and so forth. The usual space-buff propaganda.
Cornelius said, ‘The image Malenfant built of himself was clear. Here was a man who was rich and was destined to get richer, and who was clearly prepared to throw some of his money at the old dreams of space. But then his businesses started to struggle. Isn’t that true? …’
It was true. Investors had grown wary of this talk-show visionary. Space was important for business, but business only cared about the constellations of utilitarian satellites in low Earth orbit, for communications and weather and surveillance. Thus far and no further.
And Malenfant attracted no support from serious agencies – particularly from NASA. NASA had long grown wary of frightening away its political backers by thinking too big, and was focused on doing sexy science with small, cheap unmanned probes, while sustaining the careers and empires associated with the giant bureaucracy which ran the manned space programme, with its ageing Shuttle fleet and a half-built and much-delayed Space Station.
In fact Malenfant himself started to attract unwelcome personal attention. There were bar-room psychoanalysts all over the media who found a common pattern in his failure to have kids, his frustrated ambition to fly in space, and his lofty ambitions for the future of man. And then there were the kooks – the conspiracy theorists, the UFO nuts, the post-New Age synthesists, the dreaming obsessives – none of whom had anything to offer Malenfant but bad PR.
Then along had come the yellow babies in Florida, and even NASA space launches were suspended, and that seemed to be that.
As Cornelius talked, she discreetly booted up the car’s softscreen and referenced Cornelius Taine.
Thirty-eight years old. Born in Texas, not that you’d know it from the accent. Once a professional mathematician, an academic. Brilliant was the word used in the brief biog she found.
A full professor at Princeton at twenty-seven. Washed out at thirty.
She couldn’t find out why, or what he’d been doing since then. She set off a couple of data miners to answer those questions for her.
After the yellow babies, Malenfant had regrouped.
He disappeared from the TV screens. He continued to fund educational efforts – books, TV shows, movies. Emma, working within the Bootstrap corporation, saw no harm in that, nothing but positive PR, and tax-efficient besides. But in public Malenfant largely withdrew from his propagandizing, and withheld any investment from what he started to call the ‘pie-in-the-sky stuff’.
And, quietly, he began to build a seriously large business empire. For instance, he had pioneered the mining of methane as a fuel source from the big high-pressure hydrate deposits on the sea bed off North Carolina. He had leased the technology to other fields, off Norway and Indonesia and Japan and New Zealand, and bought up shares judiciously. Soon methane production was supplying a significant percentage of global energy output.
The giant tents Malenfant’s companies had erected over the sea floor, to decompose the hydrates and trap the gases, had become a symbol of his flair and ambition.
And Malenfant was on his way to becoming remarkably rich.
Space, it seemed, was the place Reid Malenfant had started from, not where he was going.
… Until – Emma thought, if Taine is right – this.
‘Of course,’ Cornelius said, ‘Malenfant’s ambition is to be applauded. I mean his real ambition, beyond this – umm, diversionary froth. I hope you understand this is my basic position. What grander goal is there to work for than the destiny of the species?’ He spread thin fingers. ‘Man is an expansive, exploring animal. We conquered Earth with Stone Age technology. Now we need new resources, new skills to fund our further growth, space to express our differing philosophies …’ He smiled. ‘I have the feeling you don’t necessarily share these views.’
She shrugged. This was an argument she’d rehearsed with Malenfant many times. ‘It’s such a gigantic, mechanistic, depressing vision. Maybe we should all just learn to get along with each other. Then we wouldn’t have to go to all the trouble of conquering the Galaxy. What do you think?’
He laughed. ‘Your marriage must have been full of fire.’ And he continued to ask her questions, trying to draw her out.
Enough. She wasn’t prepared to be pumped by this faintly sinister man about her boss, let alone her ex-husband. She buried herself in e-mails, shutting him out.
Cornelius sat in silence, as still as a basking lizard.
After an hour they reached the Californian border.
There was a border post here. An unsmiling guard scanned Emma’s wrist bar-code, her eyes hidden by insectile camera-laden sun-glasses. Since Emma and Cornelius proved to be neither black nor Latino nor Asian, and did not intend to take up permanent occupancy in the Golden State nor seek employment there, they were allowed through.
California, Emma thought sourly, is not what it used to be.
Highway 58, heading towards Mojave, took them through the desert. The sun climbed higher, and hard light fell from a hot, ozone-leached sky. The ground was baked, bleached, flat and hard as a paving slab, with only gnarled and blackened Joshua trees to challenge the endless horizontals. Somewhere to her right was Death Valley, which had, in 2004, logged the world’s all-time highest temperature at 139 degrees.
They reached Edwards Air & Space Force Base – or rather they began to drive alongside its chain-link fence, forty miles of it running alongside the highway. Edwards, with its endless expanse of dry salt lakes – natural runways – was the legendary home of the test pilot. But from the highway she could see nothing at all, no planes or hangars or patrolling men-in-black guards. Nothing but miles of link fence. The accountant in her began, involuntarily, to compute the cost of all that wire.
Still, the closeness of Edwards, with its connotation of 1960s astronaut glamour, was, she was sure, the reason Malenfant had chosen this area for his newest project. Malenfant’s methods with people were coarse, but he knew the power of symbols.
And it was, indeed, only a little way beyond Edwards that she came to the site of Malenfant’s project.
The main gate was little more than a hole in the fence, barred by a crash barrier that carried a small, almost unobtrusive, Bootstrap corporate logo. The guard was a hefty woman with a small, dazzling-bright pistol at her hip. Emma’s company credentials, appended to the u-v barcode i-d she wore on her left wrist, were enough to get her and Cornelius through the gate.
Inside the gate there was a Portakabin, once more displaying the corporate logo. Beyond that there was more desert. There was no metalled road surface, just tracks snaking to the dusty horizon.
Emma pulled the car over and climbed out. She blinked in the sudden light, felt perspiration start out of her flesh after a few seconds of the desert’s dry, sucking warmth. The shade of the cabin, even badly air-conditioned, was a relief.
She took in the cabin’s contents with a glance. Malenfant’s joky company mission statement was repeated several times: Bootstrap: Making Money in a Closed Economy – Until Something Better Comes Along … There were display stands showing the usual corporate PR, much of it approved by herself, about the methane extraction fields, and Bootstrap’s clean-up activities at Hanford and the Ukraine nuke plants and Alaska, and so forth.
Bootstrap had tied up a recent youth-oriented sponsorship with Shit Cola, and so there was a lot of bright pink Shit livery about the stands. Cornea gumbo, Emma thought: too cluttered and bright. But it defrayed the costs. And the Shit audience – sub-age-25, generally sub-literate consumers of the planet’s trendiest soft drink – were showing themselves amenable to subtle Bootstrap persuasion, mixed in with their diet of endless softsoaps and thongathons.
No evidence here of giant rocket plants in the desert, of course.
Cornelius was looking around in silence, an amused half-smile on his lips. She was finding his quiet know-all attitude intensely irritating, his silences disturbing.
She heard the whine of an electric engine, a car of some kind pulling up outside. With relief she stepped out the door.
The car was a late-model jeep, a bare frame mounted on big fat tyres, with a giant solar-cell carapace glistening like beetle chitin. It carried two people, talking animatedly. The passenger was a woman, unknown to Emma: sixty, perhaps, slim and smart, wearing some kind of trouser suit. Practical but a little hot, Emma thought.
And the driver was, of course, Reid Malenfant.
Malenfant got out of the car like a whip uncoiling. He bounded up to Emma, grabbed her arms, and kissed her cheek; his lips were rough, sun-cracked. He was ruinously tall, thin as a snake, bald as a coot. He was wearing a blue NASA-type jump-suit and heavy black boots. As usual, he looked somehow larger than those around him, as if too big for the landscape. She could smell desert dust on him, hot and dry as a sauna. He said, ‘What kept you?’
She hissed, ‘You’ve a hell of a nerve, Malenfant. What are you up to now?’
‘Later,’ he whispered. The woman with him was climbing out of the car with caution, but she seemed limber enough. Malenfant said to Emma, ‘Do you know Maura Della?’
‘Representative Della? By reputation.’
Maura Della stepped forward, a thin smile on her lips. ‘Ms Stoney. He’s told me all about you.’
‘I bet he has.’ Emma shook her hand; Delia’s grip was surprisingly strong, stronger than Cornelius Taine’s, in fact.
Malenfant said, ‘I’m trying to win the Representative’s support for the project here. But I suspect I’ve a little way to go yet.’
Della said, ‘Damn right. Frankly it seems incredible to me that you can attempt to build an eco-friendly project around rocket engines …’
Malenfant pulled a face at Emma. ‘You can tell we’re in the middle of an argument here.’
‘We sure are,’ said Della.
Malenfant fetched plastic water bottles from the car and handed them out while Maura Della kept on talking.
‘… Look, the Space Shuttle actually dumps more exhaust products into the atmosphere than any other current launcher. Water, hydrogen, hydrogen chloride and nitrogen oxides. The chloride can damage the ozone layer –’
‘If it got into the stratosphere,’ Malenfant said amiably, ‘which it doesn’t, because it rains out first.’
‘65% of it does. The rest escapes. Anyhow there are other effects. Ozone depletion because of the deposition of frozen water and aluminium oxide. Global warming contributions from carbon dioxide and particulates. Acid rain from the hydrogen chloride and the NOX products –’
‘Limited to a half-mile around the launch site.’
‘But there. Anyhow there are also the toxins associated with rocket launches, which only need to be present in small amounts. Nitrogen tet can cause acute pulmonary oedemas, hydrazine is carcinogenic – and there are old studies linking aluminium with Alzheimer’s.’
Malenfant barked laughter. ‘The aluminium in rocket motors is one hundredth of one per cent of the total US annual production. We’d have to be launching like Buck Rogers to do any real damage.’
‘Tell that to the mothers of the Florida yellow babies,’ Della said grimly.
It had been a massive scandal. Medical studies had revealed a series of birth abnormalities showing up in Daytona, Orlando and other communities close to Cape Canaveral, in Florida. Abnormal livers, faulty hearts, some external defects; a plague of jaundice, sometimes associated with serious neurological diseases. Yellow babies.
