George thinks they made Beta and are hiding their mistake to save their own hides, even if it means eventually dooming everyone.
Alex couldn’t imagine that kind of thinking. It made him ashamed to be a member of the same species. To hear Teresa Tikhana describe her Colonel Spivey, though, she might as well be talking about a creature from another planet.
Were Spivey and his collaborators even now struggling to find a solution as well? Perhaps that’s what Teresa’s husband had been working on, out in space. If so, the government boys never seemed to have stumbled on the gravity laser effect. And at this point, Alex would be damned if he’d give it to them.
Of course if we succeed the secret will come out near the end anyway. It’ll be hard to ignore a sunlike fireball rising out of the Earth, accelerating toward deep space at relativistic speeds.
By then, he and the others had better have prepared to go into hiding. In addition, Alex himself would feel compelled to take memory destroyers as soon as Beta was safely on its way, to prevent spilling what he had learned by coincidence and accident and mental fluke. In principle, it was only what he deserved, of course, for the sin of hubris. Still, he’d regret losing his mental image of the knot singularity, its intricate ten-space foldings, its awful, ignescent beauty. That loss would haunt him, he knew. Almost, he would rather die.
As if I’ll get a choice. It’s a long shot this will work at all.
They were taking a terrible chance. Using gravity-wave recoil to move Beta sounded fine in theory. But some of their initial test gazer beams for unknown reasons had interacted with matter at the planet’s surface — coupling with an earthquake fault in one case, with man-made objects in another. It was still a mystery why this happened or what the consequences might be once they really got started.
But what choice do we have?
Alex looked at the glowing points where the tetrahedron met Earth’s surface. Four sites where they must build mammoth superconducting antennas without anyone finding out. And they had so little time.
The resonators had to be evenly spaced and on dry land — not easy to arrange on a world two thirds covered in water. It had taken his computer two whole seconds to search and finally find the best arrangement.
“We only have a few months,” Teresa Tikhana said, interrupting Alex in his brooding. The American astronaut sat across the table from him in the darkened room, watching the same display. They had both fallen silent after the others left, each thinking alone.
In response, he nodded. “After that, Beta will be too massive to budge, even with the gazer. We’d only excite resonant states Stan thinks could make it even worse.”
Teresa shivered. When she sat up, she looked around in a way Alex had noticed before — as if she were checking her surroundings in some manner he couldn’t fathom. “You’ll be setting up the resonator on Rapa Nui, won’t you?” she asked, suddenly.
“Yes. That’s the anchor point, so—”
“It’s a special place, you know.” Her voice was hushed. “That’s where Atlantis is.”
“Um… Atlantis?” Perplexed, at first he thought she must be referring to the island’s eerie Neolithic history, or the haunting monoliths to be found there. Then he remembered. “Oh. The space shuttle that crashed long ago. Is it still there?”
Teresa Tikhana’s jaw tightened briefly. “It didn’t crash. Captain Iwasumi made a perfect emergency landing under impossible conditions. It was the fools in charge of bringing Atlantis home… they dropped her.”
It must have happened when she was only a child, yet the woman covered her eyes in pain. “She’s still down there, stripped, a shell. A monument on a pedestal. You should visit her if you get the chance.”
“I’ll do that. I promise.”
She looked up. Their eyes met briefly, then Teresa sighed. “I’d better pack. Dr. Goldman and I have a plane to catch.”
“Of course.” He stood up. “I… I’m glad you’re with us, Captain Tikhana. Your help is going to be vital.” Alex paused. “Also… as I said. I’m so very sorry about your husband—”
She raised a hand, cutting off another embarrassing apology. “It was an accident. If anyone’s to blame for blindness — for not picking up on what was happening…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “We’ll drop you a coded message when we get to Godhavn, Dr. Lustig.”
“Have a safe trip, Captain.” Hesitantly, he offered his hand. After a moment, she took it. Her slim, calloused grip betrayed a single faint tremor before she quickly let go again. Then she turned away, departing for her quarters in another part of the cave.
“And good luck,” Alex added softly after she had gone. “We’re all going to need more than a little of that, too.”
□ World Net News: Channel 265/General Interest/ Level 9+ (surface transcription)
“Central Amazonia. This is Nigel Landsbury reporting in real time for the BBC. I’ve come here to this desolate land to cover a scene both tragic and historic, as Brazilian national forces pursue Tupo rebels to their last redoubts.
[Image of desert. Scrub bush and cracked clay. Heat waves rise from the hardpan all the way to a blurry horizon. A reporter’s voice carries over the sound of crackling burning]
[□ For raw footage voice-link “AMAZONIA One” now.]
“Here an armed detachment of FLS fighters was caught an hour ago, just short of the edge of the Chico Mendes National Salvation Park …”
[□ For background reports, link “FLS REBELS” or “CHICO MENDES PARK.”]
[Camera pans, and viewer suddenly sees smoke rising from burning vehicles surrounded by strewn bodies. Military helicopters shred the plumes as uniformed soldiers hustle past, prodding prisoners with hands on their heads.]
“The campesinos who died or were captured here today could not have hidden for long in their rain-forest refuge. The sensor technology [□ link “SENSOR-TEK”] that cuts short so many would-be guerrilla movements nowadays would be no less effective under the canopy. Their cause was lost as soon as it turned violent, with the massacre of the last Quich’hara Indian village, two weeks ago.”
[Still panning, camera takes in the reporter himself, tan clothes whipped by a relentless dry wind. Just to his left, startlingly, there appears the sharp edge of a towering forest… a sudden transformation from caked clay to tight-packed, slender, swaying trees.]
“But there is a further, ultimate irony… that this forest the rebels wanted to claim for their impoverished families… their paradise for escape from the strict regimen of the crowded urban poor… is doomed anyway. Yesterday, the Brazilian government admitted the failure of the “preservation islands” approach to saving Amazonia, recognizing at last that you cannot save a patch, here and there, of a whole ecosystem.”
[Closeup on the reporter’s face, awash with memory of tragedy]
[□ Report: Braz. Nat. WeRe 6309467/q/3509.]
[□ Rebuttaclass="underline" NorAChuGa 2038-421/Pres. Isl.]
“Contracts have already been signed to harvest the dying hardwoods of Chico Mendes Park, removal of the large animals to life arks, and cryosuspension of as many insect and plant seed types as can be catalogued in time. This systematic approach, tested last year with some small success in Manaus Province, has never before been tried on such a vast scale. Experts doubt more than five percent of the remaining species can be registered before harvesters must complete their .work.”
[Closeup of the forest edge… yellowed leaves crumble to dust in a human hand.]
[□ Contract: Braz. Nat. PaRe 9867984/i/567.]
[□ Contract: Life Ark 62 LeSs 2393808/k/78.]