The Precipice (16 page)

“That's a pretty good optical recognition system they've got,” Pancho said.

“I don't believe it's optical,” Amanda countered. To Humphries she asked, “Is it?”

“Very sharp, Amanda,” he said, impressed. “Very sharp. The dishes have monomolecular beacons sprayed on their bottoms. The
robots sense the microwave signals.”

Pancho lifted up her water tumbler and squinted at its bottom.

“The chip's too small to see with the naked eye,” Humphries said.

“What powers'em?”

“The heat from the food or drink. They have trouble with iced drinks… and your salad.”

Pancho thought it over for half a second. “Dishes pick up residual heat when we handle them, huh?”

“That's right.”

Pancho smiled as the other robot placed a steaming plate of frogs' legs before her. Don't want Humphries to think Mandy's
the only smart one here, she told herself.

All through dinner Humphries was charming, solicitous, all smiles. He paid almost as much attention to Pancho as he did to
Amanda, up to the point where he encouraged Mandy to tell them about her early life. She began to talk, hesitantly at first,
about growing up in London, winning a scholarship to the International Space University.

“It wasn't easy,” Amanda said, with almost childlike candor. “All the men seemed to think I was better suited to be a photographer's
model than an astronaut.”

Humphries made a sympathetic murmur. Pancho nodded, understanding all over again that Mandy's good looks had been as much
of a problem for her as an advantage.

“But I made it,” she finished happily, “and here we all are.”

“Good for you,” said Humphries, patting her hand. “I think you've done wonderfully well.”

As dessert was being served—fresh fruit from the botanical garden outside with soymilk ice cream—Amanda asked where the lavatory
was.

Once she had left the room Pancho leaned closer to Humphries and asked in a lowered voice, “Well, whattaya think?”

He frowned with annoyance. “About what?”

“About Mandy.” She almost added,
lunkhead,
but stopped herself just in time.

“She's wonderful,” Humphries said, beaming. “Beautiful but brainy, too. You don't see that very often.”

Pancho thought, Women don't let you see their brains very often, not if they can get by on their looks.

Aloud, she asked, “So d'you think she'd be any good cozyin' up to Dan Randolph?”

“No!” he snapped.

“No?” Pancho was astonished. “Why not?”

“I don't want her anywhere near Randolph. He'll seduce her in a hot second.”

Pancho stared at the man. I thought that was the whole idea, she said to herself. Get Mandy into Randolph's bed. I thought
that's what he'd want.

“She's much too fine a woman to be used that way,” Humphries added.

Oh, for cryin' out loud, Pancho realized. He's fallen for her! This guy who picks up women like paperclips and dumps ‘em when
he feels like it, he doesn't just have the hots for Mandy. He's fallen in love with her. Just like that!

D
an couldn't help contrasting in his mind this meeting of Selene's governing council with the meeting of the GEC's executive
board he'd attended a few weeks earlier in London.

The meeting took place in Selene's theater, with the council sitting at student's desks arranged up on the stage in a semi-circle.
Just about every seat on the main floor and the balconies was taken, although the box seats on either side of the stage were
all empty. Maybe they've bewi roped off for some reason, Dan thought. Must be two thousand people out there, he thought as
he peeked out at the audience through the curtains screening the stage's wings. Just about every voting citizen in Selene's
showed up for this meeting.

As he stood in the wing of the stage, the council members filed past him, taking their seats. For the most part they looked
young, vigorous. Six women, five men, none with white hair. A couple of premature baldies among the men; they must be engineers,
Dan thought. He knew that membership on the
council was a part-time task assigned by lottery; no one was allowed to duck their public service, although they could take
time off their regular jobs to attend to their extra duties.

“Nervous?”

Dan turned at the sound of Doug Stavenger's voice.

Smiling, he answered, “When you've had to sit through as many board meetings as I have, you don't get nervous, you just want
to get it the hell over with.”

Stavenger patted Dan lightly on the shoulder. “This one will be different from all the others, Dan. It's more like an old-fashioned
New England town meeting than one of your board of directors' get-togethers.”

Dan agreed with a brief nod. Often in his mind he'd spelled it b-o-r-e-d meeting. This one would be different, he felt sure.

It was.

Stavenger served as non-voting chairman of the governing council, a largely honorary position. More pomp than circumstance,
Dan thought. The chairman stood at the podium set up at one end of the stage, only a few meters from where Dan stood waiting
for his turn to speak. The meeting agenda was displayed on a wallscreen along the back of the stage. Dan was dismayed to see
that he was last on a list of nine.

The first five items went fairly quickly. The sixth was a new regulation tightening everyone's water allotment. Several people
from the audience shot to their feet to make their opinions heard in no uncertain terms.

One of the council members was chairman of the water board, a chubby, balding, red-faced man wearing the coral-red coveralls
of the Tourism Department The student's desk at which he sat looked uncomfortably small for him.

“There's no way around it,” he said, looking flustered. “No matter how efficiently we recycle our water, it's not a hundred
percent and it never will be. The more people we allow in, the less water we have to go around.”

“Then why don't we shut down tourism,” came an angry voice from the floor.

“Tourism's down to a trickle anyway,” the water chairman replied. “It's less than five percent of our problem. Immigration
is our big difficulty.”

“Refugees,” someone said in a harsh stage whisper.

“Don't let ‘em in!” an angry voice snapped.

“You can't do that!”

“Why the hell not? They made the mess on Earth. Let ‘em stew in their own crap.”

“Can't we find new sources of water?” a citizen asked.

Stavenger answered from the podium, “Our exploration teams have failed to locate any other than the polar ice fields we've
been using all along.”

“Bring up a few loads from Earthside,” someone suggested.

“Yeah, and they'll gouge us for it.”

“But if we need it, what else can we do?”

The audience stirred restlessly. A dozen conversations buzzed through the theater.

The water board chairman raised his voice to be heard over the chatter. “We're negotiating with the GEC for water shipments,
but they want to put one of their own people onto the water board in return.”

“Hell no!”

“Never!”

“Those bastards have been trying to get control of us since day one!”

The audience roared its angry disapproval.

Stavenger, still standing at the podium, pressed his thumb on a button set into its control panel and a painftilly loud hooting
whistle rang through the theater, silencing the shouters. Dan covered his ears until the shriek died away.

“We've got to maintain order here,” Stavenger said in the numbed silence. “Otherwise we'll never get anywhere.”

Reluctantly, they accepted the fact that water allotments would be decreased slightly. Then the water board chairman held
out a potential carrot.

“We'll have the new recycling system on-line in a few
months,” he said, drumming his fingers nervously on his desktop. “If it works as efficiently as the simulations show it should,
we can go back to the current water allotments—at least for a year or so.”

“And what happens if this recycling system fails?” asked a stern-faced elderly woman.

“It's being thoroughly tested,” the water chairman answered defensively.

“This is just a way for the people running the damned hotel to put up their own swimming pool and spa,” grumbled a lanky,
longhaired citizen. He looked like a physicist to Dan. “Tourism is down so they want to fancy up the hotel to attract more
tourists.”

Dan wondered about that Tourism is down because the world's going down the toilet, he thought. Then he admitted, But, yeah,
people running tourist facilities will try their damnedest to attract customers, no matter what What else can they do, except
go out of business altogether?

In the end, the council decided to accept the water allotment restrictions until the new recycling system had been in operation
for three continuous months. Then they would have a new hearing to decide on whether they could return to the old allotments.

Two more items were swiftly disposed of, then at last Stavenger said, “The final item on our agenda tonight is a proposal
by Dan Randolph, head of Astro Manufacturing.” He turned slightly and prompted, “Dan?”

There was some scattered applause as Dan stepped up to the podium. Astro employees, Dan thought Stavenger moved off-stage.

He gripped the edges of the podium and looked over the crowd. He had no notes, no visual aids. For several moments he merely
stood there, thinking hard. The audience began to murmur, whisper.

Dan began, “Halley's Comet will be returning to the inner
solar system in a few years. Last time it came by, Halley's blew out roughly thirty million tons of water vapor in six months.
If I remember the numbers right, the comet lost something like three tons of water per second when it was closest to the Sun.”

He waited a heartbeat, then asked, “Do you think you could use that water?”

“Hell yes!” somebody shouted. Dan grinned when he saw that it was Pancho Lane, sitting up in the first row of the balcony.

“Then let's go get it!” Dan said.

He spent the next fifteen minutes outlining the fusion rocket system and assuring them that it had performed flawlessly in
all its tests to date.

“A fusion-driven spacecraft can bring in all the water you need, either from hydrate-bearing asteroids or from comets,” Dan
said. “I need your help to build a full-scale system and flight test it.”

One of the women councilors asked, “Are you asking Selene to fund your corporation? Why can't you raise the money from the
regular sources?”

Dan made himself smile at her. “This project will cost between one and two billion international dollars, Earthside. None
of the banks or other funding sources that I've approached will risk that kind of money. They're all fully committed to rebuilding
and mitigation programs. They've got their hands full with the greenhouse warming; they're not interested in space projects.”

“Damned flatland idiots,” somebody groused.

“I agree,” Dan said, grinning. ‘They're too busy doing what's urgent to even think about what's important.”

“Out of all the corporations on Earth,” someone called out, “surely you can make a deal or two to raise the capital you need.”

Dan decided to cut the discussion short. “Listen. I could
probably put together a deal that would raise the money we need, but I thought I'd give you a chance to come in on this. It's
the opportunity you've been waiting for.”

“Selene doesn't have that kind of money at its disposal,” said one of the councilmen.

“No,” countered Dan, “but you have the trained people and the facilities to build the fusion rocket with nanomachines “

A hush fell over the theater. Nanotechnology. They all knew it was possible. And yet…

“Nanomachines aren't magic wands, Mr. Randolph,” said the councilor seated closest to Dan, a lean, pinch-faced young man who
looked like a jogging fanatic.

“I understand that,” said Dan.

“At one time we thought we could develop nanomachines to produce water for us by taking hydrogen from the incoming solar wind
and combining it with oxygen from the regolith. It was technically feasible but in practice a complete failure.”

Recognizing the councilman as one who loved the sound of his own voice, Dan said curtly, “If nanomachines can build entire
Clipperships they can build fusion drives.”

Another woman councilor, with the bright red hair and porcelain-white complexion of the Irish, spoke up. “I've been stuck
with the job of treasurer for the council, the thanks I get for being an honest accountant.”

Dan laughed, along with most of the audience.

“But it's a sad fact that we don't have the funds to spare on your program, Mr. Randolph, no matter how admirable it may be.
The money just isn't in our hands.”

“I don't want money,” Dan said.

“Then what?”

“I want volunteers. I need people who are willing to devote their time to the greatest challenge of our age: developing the
resources of the entire solar system.”

“Ah, but that boils down to money, now, doesn't it?”

“No it doesn't,” said a deep voice from the middle of the
theater. Dan saw a squat, heavily-built black man get to his feet.

“I'm Bernie James. I retired from the nanotech lab last year. I'm only a technician, but I'll work with you on this.”

A few rows farther back, a taller man, blond hair cropped short, got to his feet. “Rolf Uhrquest, Space Transportation Department,”
he said, in a clear tenor voice. “I would be willing to take my accumulated vacation time to work on this fusion project.”