This symbiosis arrangement is a bit crude, isn't it? Julia asked. Somehow, wholehearted praise would have seemed like surrendering.
It's only a proof of concept prototype, Snowy. The first generation. I'm not even sure if it will work externally, exposed to a vacuum. Maybe we'll have to gnaw at asteroids from within. Once I've demonstrated its viability, we can get the research divisions to work on refining it. Top-grade geneticists should be able to splice all this into a single genetic structure.
Event Horizon genetic research divisions, Julia thought privately. She reviewed the arrangement again, implications sleeting through her mind, if Royan was right, if the microbe's traits could be loaded into landcoral cells the way he said, producing a single space-adapted bioware organism, then there really would be rivers of metal pouring into the global economy. Enough to support Western-level consumerism right across the globe. Nice idea. No, nice theory, she corrected herself sharply; she'd had too many dreams stall and degenerate into mediocrity to believe in technology based utopia ideals now.
For all his determination, Royan wasn't rooted in the real world. The central concept was sound, but the ancillary industries—the fleets of spaceships needed to pick up the metal and minerals, the industrial modules necessary to convert it into foamedsteel landing bodies, more recovery fleets, more factories to use it, the energy they would need—that would take time and money to organize. Besides, New London had cubic kilometres of ore in reserve already; and there were four more asteroid capture missions currently underway. Taken together, just those five asteroids would produce enough exotic metal and raw material to supply global demand for another twenty years.
Sounds too good to be true, she said carefully. Have you considered what it would take to put it into practice?
Nothing else, he said. The answer she knew he would give her. Don't you see, Snowy? The asteroid disseminator plant is a living machine. The very first. I'm on the verge of creating nanoware here, Snowy, the most powerful technology there is. Once you've cracked this you can do anything, it's pure von Neumannism, self-replicating, and capable of producing anything you can supply a blueprint of. After they've been developed properly the cells can be programmed to dismantle an asteroid, or carve out a chamber like Hyde Cavern; they can be grown Into an O'Neill colony or a teaspoon and anything in between; you can put together minute specialist clusters that'll float through the human bloodstream repairing tissue damage, airborne spores that can break up the world's carbon dioxide, reverse the Warming. Nanoware rules the micro and the macro, Snowy. And this splice is only the beginning.
She wondered how that would square up against atomic structuring technology. Were the two complementary, or antagonistic? If she didn't get the nuclear force generator data for Event Horizon, could she counter with asteroid dissemination? Save the company that way. More questions, problems.
And who would benefit? The turmoil from one new revolutionary technology was bad enough, introducing two that were this radical would produce utter chaos. She remembered what had followed Event Horizon's success with the gigaconductor; whole companies becoming obsolete overnight, workers thrown on the dole; it had redefined economies all over the planet. And that was in a time when the power and transport industries had declined to virtually nothing.
But right now the global economy was powerfully upbeat, expansion was running at nine per cent, there was investment, confidence, stability. The planet was in better shape than it had been for decades.
In any case, present-day cybernetics was a form of large-scale von Neumannism. And at least with cybernetics there was room for people—designers, maintenance crews, civil engineers who built the factories. Their hierarchy might be top-heavy with 'ware-literate staff, but there were still jobs for the semi-skilled, semi-literate, some dignity, keeping them off the dole. What would they do in a world where you could get a ten-bedroom mansion just by planting a nanoware kernel in the ground, then watch it grow like a flower?
Should I suppress this before it starts? Do I have the right, or even the wisdom? That's what it boils down to. Another bloody decision I have to make. Always me.
She felt the blood hot in her cheeks. All right, you've modified the microbes in the laboratory. Does this arrangement actually work in practice?
It has up until the moment I was recorded, he said. I grew a small prototype in the Farm laboratory's clone vat, checked that the two modified microbes functioned the way they were supposed to. I had to do a bit more tailoring, a few modifications. But the penultimate stage is completed. That's why this recording exists, to tell you I'm ready to see if the asteroid disseminator plant works, if the polyp and the microbes will operate as an integrated unit. I'm going up to New London to run some field trials.
Then something must have happened, she said.
The image of the microbes popped, Royan was standing before her perception point. Snowy, if it has, if I've screwed up, then do whatever you have to.
Yeah.
I love you, Snowy.
I'll remember.
He hung his head, and vanished.
Calculated, she reminded herself sternly, a coldly logical emotion.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The arcade was cut seventy metres directly into Hyde Cavern's southern endcap; there was no moving walkway, just a broad floor of green and red stone tiles.
Hard cavernlight shone through a rosette of stained glass above the entrance, casting a colourful dapple over the shoppers milling near by. Big shiny brass fans spun slowly above the hanging biolum globes, circulating the air. It was cool, quiet and relaxing.
The small shops reminded Charlotte of the ones she had toured in Rodeo Drive, exclusive and exquisite. If they had a fault, it was the sheer monotony of tastefulness; everything blended, colours and shapes. It would be so easy to get sucked in. Designers had built their reputations on those interiors. Some of the names were familiar. Parent companies treating New London as a prestige showcase. After all, there were a lot of their clientele who came up here for casinos and low-gravity hotels, simply for the cachet of having left Earth. But seeing a 300k.p.h. Lotus Commodore for sale in a space colony that didn't even have roads appealed to her sense of the ridiculous.
She walked past the car showroom window, almost smiling. Teresa Farrow, her bodyguard from the crash team, gave the streamlined, royal-purple sports car a fast glance, shaking her head. There was something about the hardline woman, a sort of vagueness, which convinced Charlotte she was another psychic. Her mind vigilant on some unknown level, alert for trouble.
But she hadn't objected when Charlotte said she wanted to come down to the arcade. It was practically underneath the Governor's Residence anyway.
The American Express office was halfway down the arcade on the right. Charlotte pushed the glass door open, walking straight into the reception area. It looked like the office of some ancient legal partnership, dark wood panels and shiny red leather chairs.
"You're going to think me terribly silly," she said, in her gushy voice, to the uniformed girl behind the desk. "But I left my card on Earth. I must have forgotten it when I changed into my shipsuit."
The girl smiled brightly. "That's quite all right, madam. We're here to help."
Obtaining a replacement didn't take long. A data construct to fill out. A thumbprint check, the company's memory core on Earth confirming she was who she said she was, that she had an account with them. Cancelling her original card, wherever it was by now. Being nibbled by perplexed fish, presumably.