A Second Chance at Eden (13 page)

His office didn’t have quite the extravagance of Har-wood’s, it was more how I imagined the study of a computer science professor would look like. The desk was one giant console, while two walls were simply floor to ceiling holoscreens displaying orbital plots and breathtaking views of Jupiter’s upper cloud level, relayed directly from the aerostats drifting in the gas-giant’s troposphere. A hazed ochre universe that went on for ever, flecked by long streamers of ammonia cirrus that scudded past like a time-lapse video recording. The JSKP currently had twenty-seven of the vast hot-hydrogen balloons floating freely in the atmosphere; five hundred metre diameter spheres supporting the filtration plant which extracted He
₃
from Jupiter’s constituent gases, and liquified it ready for collection by robot shuttles.

He
₃
is one of the rarest substances in the solar system, but it holds the key to commercially successful fusion. The first fusion stations came on-line in 2041, burning a mix of deuterium and tritium; second-generation stations employed a straight deuterium–euterium reaction. Those combinations have a number of advantages: ignition is easy, the energy release is favourable, and the fuels are available in abundance. The major drawback is that both reactions are neutron emitters. Although you can use this effect to breed more tritium, by employing lithium blankets, it’s a messy operation, requiring more complex (read: expensive) reactors, and a supplementary processing facility to handle the lithium. Without lithium blankets the reactor walls become radioactive, then have to be disposed of; and you require additional shielding to protect the magnetic confinement system. The costs in both monetary and environmental terms weren’t much of an improvement on fission reactors.

Then in 2062 the JSKP dropped its first aerostat into Jupiter’s atmosphere, and began extracting He
₃
in viable quantities. There are only minute amounts of the isotope present in Jupiter. But minute is a relative thing when you’re dealing with a gas giant.

The fusion industry – if you’ll pardon the expression – went critical. Stations burning a deuterium–He
₃
mix produced one of the cleanest possible fusion reactions, a high-energy proton emitter. It also proved an ideal space drive, cutting down costs of flights to Jupiter, which in turn reduced the costs of shipping back He
₃
, which led to increased demand.

An upward spiral of benefits. He
₃
was every economist’s fantasy commodity.

Bob Parkinson was the man charged with ensuring a steady supply was maintained; a senior JSKP vice-president, he ran the entire mining operation. It wasn’t the kind of responsibility I would ever want, but he appeared to handle it stoically. A tall fifty-year-old, with a monk’s halo of short grizzled hair, and a heavily wrinkled face.

‘I was wondering when you were going to get round to me,’ he said.

‘They told me it would have to be today.’

‘God, yes. I can’t delay the lowering, not even for Penny. And I have to be there.’ A finger flicked up to one of the screens showing a small rugby-ball-shaped asteroid which seemed to be just skimming Jupiter’s cloud tops. Fully half of its surface was covered with machinery; large black radiator fins formed a ruff collar around one conical peak. A flotilla of industrial stations swarmed in attendance, along with several inter-orbit transfer craft.

‘That’s the cloudscoop anchor?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Quite an achievement; the pinnacle of our society’s engineering prowess.’

‘I can’t see the scoop itself.’

‘It’s on the other side.’ He gave an instruction to his desk, and the view began to tilt. Against the backdrop of salmon and white clouds I could see a slender black line protruding from the side of the asteroid which was tide-locked towards the gas giant. Its end was lost somewhere among the rumbustious cyclones of the equatorial storm band.

‘A monomolecule silicon pipe two and a half thousand kilometres long,’ Bob Parkinson said with considerable pride. ‘With the scoop head filters working at full efficiency, it can pump a tonne of He
₃
up to the anchor asteroid every day. There will be no need to send the shuttles down to the aerostats any more. We just liquify it on the anchor asteroid, and transfer it straight into the tanker ships.’

‘At one-third the current cost,’ I said.

‘I see you do your homework, Chief Parfitt.’

‘I try. What happens to the aerostats?’

‘We intend to keep them and the shuttles running for a while yet. They are very high-value chunks of hardware, and they’ve got to repay their investment outlay. But we won’t be replacing them when they reach the end of their operational life. JSKP plans to have a second cloudscoop operational in four years’ time. And, who knows, now we know how to build one, we might even stick to schedule.’

‘When do you start lowering?’

‘Couple of days. But the actual event will be strung out over a month, because believe me this is one hyper-complicated manoeuvre. We’re actually decreasing the asteroid’s velocity, which reduces its orbital height, and pushes the scoop down into the atmosphere.’

‘How deep?’

‘Five hundred kilometres. But the trouble starts when it begins to enter the stratosphere; there’s going to be a lot of turbulence, which will cause flexing. The lower section of the pipe is studded with rockets to damp down the oscillations, and of course the scoop head itself has aerodynamic surfaces. Quantumsoft has come up with a momentum-command program which they think will work, but nobody’s ever attempted anything like this before. Which is why we need a large team of controllers on site. The time delay from here would be impossible.’

‘And you’re leading them.’

‘That’s what they pay me for.’

‘Well, good luck.’

‘Thanks.’

We stared at each other for a moment. Having to conduct a direct interview with someone who was technically my superior is the kind of politics I can really do without.

‘As far as we can ascertain at this point, Penny Maowkavitz didn’t have any problems in her professional life,’ I said. ‘That leaves us with her personal life, and her involvement with Boston. The motive for her murder has to spring from one of those two facets. You are one of the trustees named in her will, she obviously felt close to you. What can you tell me about her?’

‘Her personal life, not much. Everyone up here works heavy schedules. When we did meet it was either on JSKP business, or discussing the possibilities for civil readjustment. Penny never did much socializing anyway. So I wouldn’t know who she argued with in private.’

‘And what about in the context of Boston? According to my information you’re now its leader.’

His tolerant expression cooled somewhat. ‘We have a council. Policies are debated, then voted on. Individuals and personality aren’t that important, the overall concept is what counts.’

‘So you’re not going to change anything now she’s gone?’

‘Nothing was ever finalized before her death,’ he said unhappily. ‘We knew why Penny had the views she did, and made allowances.’

‘What views?’

It wasn’t the question he wanted, that much was obvious. A man who took flying an asteroid in his stride, he was discomforted by simply having to recount the arguments that went on in what everyone insisted on describing to me as a civilized discussion forum.

He ran his hands back through the hair above his ears, concern momentarily doubling the mass of creases on his face. ‘It’s the timing of the thing,’ he said eventually. ‘Penny wanted us to make a bid for independence as soon as the cloudscoop was operational. Six to eight weeks from now.’

I let out a soft whistle. ‘That soon?’ That wasn’t in Zimmels’s briefing. I’d gathered the impression they were thinking in terms of a much longer timescale.

‘Penny wanted that date because that way she’d still be alive to see it happen. Who can blame her?’

‘But you didn’t agree.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ He said it almost as a challenge to me. ‘It’s too soon. There’s some logic behind it, admittedly. With an operating cloudscoop we can guarantee uninterrupted deliveries of He
₃
to Earth. It’s a much more reliable system than sending the shuttles down to pick up fuel from the aerostats. Jupiter’s atmosphere is not a benign environment; we lose at least a couple of shuttles each year, and the aerostats take a real pounding. But the cloudscoop – hell, there are virtually no moving parts. Once it’s functioning it’ll last for a century, with only minimal maintenance. And we have now established the production systems to keep on building new cloudscoops. So when it comes to He
₃
acquisition technology we’re completely self-sufficient, we don’t have to rely on Earth or the O’Neill Halo for anything.’

‘And biotechnology habitats are also autonomous,’ I observed. ‘You don’t need spare parts for them either.’

‘True. But it’s not quite that simple. For all its size and cost and technology, the JSKP operation here is still very much a pioneering venture; roughly equivalent to the aircraft industry between the last century’s two World Wars. We’re at the propeller-driven monoplane stage.’

‘That’s hard to credit.’

‘You’ve talked to Pieter Zernov, I believe. He’s full of dreams of what the habitats can eventually evolve into. We need money for that, money and time. Admittedly not much in comparison to the cost of a cloudscoop; but nor is it a trivial sum. Then there’s Callisto. At this moment I’ve got a team there surveying the equator for a suitable mass driver site. JSKP is planning to start construction in 2094, and use it to fire tanks of He
₃
at Earth’s L3 point. There will be a whole string of tanks stretching right across the solar system. It’ll take three years for them to arrive at L3, but once they start, delivery will be continuous. A mass driver will eliminate the need for ships like the
Ithilien
to make powered runs every month.’

‘So what are you worried about? That Earth won’t supply the parts for a mass driver? They’ll be acting against their own interest. Besides, you’ll always find one company willing to oblige.’

‘It’s not the availability of technology. It’s the cost. The next decade is going to see JSKP investment in Jupiter triple if not quadruple. And it’s only after that, when there are several cloudscoops operational, and the mass driver is flinging He
₃
at Earth on a regular basis, when you’ll start to see the cash flow reversing. Once we’ve established an He
₃
delivery operation sophisticated enough to function with minimum maintenance and minimum intervention, the real profits are going to start rolling in. And that’s when we can start thinking about buying out the existing shareholders.’

‘I see what you mean. If you try and buy them out now, you won’t have the money for expansion you need.’

He nodded, pleased I was seeing his viewpoint. ‘That’s right. All this talk of independence is really most impulsive and premature. It can happen, it should happen, but only when the moment is right to assure success.’

Company line, that’s what it sounded like to me. Which left me thinking: would a JSKP vice-president really be an unswervingly committed member of a rebellion against the board? Whatever the outcome, independence or otherwise, Bob Parkinson would keep the same job, probably for the same pay. Christ, but he’d manoeuvred himself into a superb position to play both ends against the middle. Just how shrewd was he?

‘From what you’ve just told me, Boston actually benefited from Penny Maowkavitz’s death.’

‘That’s way out of line, Chief, and you know it.’

‘Yeah. Sorry. Thinking out loud; it’s a bad habit. But I have to run through the process of elimination.’

‘Well, I’d say you can eliminate any Boston members. Pieter told you what kind of ideals drive us. If it had come to a vote, Penny would have abided by the majority decision, as would I.’

‘You mean you haven’t decided yet?’

‘There is a line, Chief Parfitt, and you are not on our side of it. I’ve put myself in a most dangerous position confiding in you. One word to the board from you, and my role out here is finished, along with my career and my pension and my future. But I talked to you anyway, honestly and openly, because I can see you genuinely want to find Penny’s murderer, and I believe you’re capable of doing so. But informing you of anything more than our general intentions, things which you could pick up in any bar in the habitat, that’s out of the question. You see, you’ve been making some very ingratiating sounds towards us, words we like to hear, words we’re flattered to hear, especially from your lips. But we don’t know if they’re real, or if they’re just an excellent interview technique. So why don’t you tell me; will the Eden police try to prevent Boston from achieving independence?’

I looked into his hooded eyes, searching for the depth which must surely come from being augmented by other minds. There was a great deal of resolution, but nothing much else. Bob Parkinson was a man alone.

So I had to ask myself, did he really think the board didn’t know of his membership? Or if they did, and he was their provocateur, why wouldn’t he tell me?

‘It’s like this,’ I said. ‘I would never fight a battle, unless I knew I’d already won.’

*

My third day started with a dream. I was completely naked, standing on Jupiter’s delicate ring. Clouds swirled eternal below me, perfectly textured mountains of frozen crystals glittering in every shade of red, from deep magenta to a near-dazzling scarlet. Close enough that I could reach out and touch them, fingertips stirring the interlocking whorls, bathing my skin in a sensation of powder-fine snow. It tingled. The planet was crooning plaintively, a bass whale-song emerging from depths beyond perception. I watched, entranced, as its energy shroud was revealed to me, the magnetosphere and particle wind, embracing it like the milk-white folds of an embryo membrane. They palpitated slowly, long fronds streaming out behind the umbra.

Then the palpitations began to grow, becoming more frenzied. Long tears opened up, spilling out a precious golden haze. A ripping sound grew into thunder, and the ring quaked below my feet.