“Ah, Mr. Dawlish,” the Senator said, as the maid waved Gunter into the Senator’s suite. It was practically a luxury apartment in its own right. “Would you care for coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Dawlish said. He waited for the Senator to finish pouring two cups of coffee, then took a seat. “I was surprised you called me today.”
“I much prefer reading your work to that of the MSM,” the Senator said. “It’s either endless abuse or crawling, depending on which side you’re on. The bloggers are much more even-handed.”
That, Gunter knew, wasn’t entirely true. Bloggers could have a political slant just as easily as a hired reporter. But when there were no editors, it was easier to see the political slant for what it was and disregard it. And besides, most bloggers certainly tried to be even-handed, even if it didn’t quite work out.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I won’t lie to you,” Cavendish said, as he sat down. “Recent events have quite unsettled the GOP — and the Democrats too. Who knows what will be the end result of all this new technology?”
Gunter smiled. “A better world?”
“Perhaps, or a worse one,” Cavendish said. “What will happen to America if our best and brightest go into space? Would we be losing the talent we need to keep ourselves a First World nation?”
“Perhaps,” Gunter said. “Or perhaps we would be securing our future instead.”
He shrugged. Years ago, he’d read a research paper that asserted that Americans came from hardy stock. The first Americans — or at least the first settlers, seeing the paper didn’t seem to recognise the existence of the Native Americans — had been willing to leave Europe and make a new life in America, even though there had been a very high risk of death. Their descendents had a fire, the author had claimed, that their relatives in Europe lacked. He’d concluded by asserting that America needed an improved immigration policy to ensure that only those with the drive and determination to succeed were invited into the country.
There was no way to know if the author was actually correct, but he’d heard the rumours winging their way through the political mainstream. Young men and women with the drive and determination to succeed were signing up for lunar settlement in vast numbers; the waiting list, he’d heard, already included millions of names. And these men and women wouldn’t just be determined to succeed, they’d also be natural supporters of the GOP. The party was watching its natural voter base threaten to erode.
But it was likely to cause other problems too. What would happen, he asked himself, if he tax burden on the average American citizen continued to rise?
“The transition has to be carefully managed,” Cavendish said. “We must elect a new government that will guide America through the next few years.”
Gunter lifted his eyebrows. “Are you planning to run for President?”
“I think so,” Cavendish said. “But matters are undecided at the moment.”
“Because half of the GOP thinks that most of their representatives in Washington are RINOs,” Gunter said. “Or traitors.”
He sighed. It was another problem, one that bedevilled all political parties. At base, they were political consensuses, compromises between different attitudes and viewpoints that allowed them all to stand under the same banner. But when large parts of the organisation felt betrayed, they tended to make their displeasure felt. Even without Steve Stuart and the alien technology, the GOP would probably have had a few uncomfortable years. But then, it was probably true of the Democrat Party too. Hope and change had simply not materialised.
“I would also like to open up talks with Mr. Stuart directly,” Cavendish added. “His endorsement would be very useful.”
Gunter doubted that Stuart would offer anything of the sort. “I can certainly give him your number,” he said. “But he was pretty alienated from mainstream politics even before he started his own country. He might have nothing to say to you.”
“There’s no harm in asking,” the Senator said. “And besides, I have other plans for the future.”
Sighing inwardly, Gunter settled in for the long haul.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Shadow Warrior, Mars Orbit
“Back on Earth, there are people — know-nothings — protesting about what we are doing here,” Steve said. He hated giving speeches, but he had to admit there was a certain satisfaction in giving this one. “They think what we’re doing is morally wrong. They think that we’re the bad guys for slamming a few asteroids into Mars. They think we’re” — he held up his hands to make quotation marks — “damaging the environment.”
There were a handful of chuckles from several of his listeners. They’d all suffered at the hands of environmentalists or environmental regulations, regulations designed by bureaucrats who knew next to nothing about farming or anything else they sought to regulate. And the whole idea of opposing the terraforming of Mars, they all agreed, was absurd. Humanity needed more places to live.
Steve smiled and went on. “But we are the builders, the ones who make it possible for humanity to live,” he continued. “Mars is a dead world, utterly dead. There are no giant slugs or rock snakes crawling over the surface, nor are there any traces of a long-gone civilisation. What is the harm, I ask you, in turning Mars into another homeworld for mankind?
“There isn’t any harm,” he concluded. “Let the protesters exhaust themselves shouting and screaming down on Earth. Let them bemoan what we’re doing, here and now, just as they bemoan our ancestors who settled America. But somehow I doubt they will refuse to visit Mars in the future, just as they don’t go home to Europe and abandon America. Today, the future belongs to those who dream and build a better world.”
He lifted his glass. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I give you the future.”
On the display, seventeen asteroids tumbled towards Mars. They’d been carefully selected, then nudged towards their targets with nuclear bombs Steve had purchased from Russia. The environmentalists had howled about that too — nukes in space, they’d wailed — but the whole system had worked perfectly well. Mars would get its first infusion of water, the Russians would get a handful of fusion power plants and a number of nuclear weapons would be removed from Earth. The Russian weapons had been crude, according to the techs, but perfectly functional. And they’d been used to build rather than destroy.
But we’re going to need more of them, he thought. Talks with America over the production of additional nuclear devices — they’d been trying to stay away from the word bomb — were going nowhere fast. We’re going to have to set up breeder reactors of our own.
They did have several advantages over Earth, he knew. Nuclear waste — always a problem — could be simply launched into the sun, where it would vanish without trace. He’d actually offered to take the nuclear waste from various countries on Earth and dispose of it, although those negotiations weren’t proceeding any faster. Fear of a shuttle accident, it seemed, was delaying the talks. Never mind that there hadn’t been a single shuttle accident in three months…
He shook his head, then looked back at the display. It did look destructive, he had to admit, but the icy asteroids would melt within Mars’s scant atmosphere and increase the water content of the dead world. The water would match up with seeds the terraforming crews had already scattered, starting the slow development of a breathable atmosphere. Brute-force terraforming, as the aliens called it, would still take upwards of a hundred years, but by the time it had finished Mars would live again. The only real problem was warming the planet long enough to develop a proper greenhouse effect.