“Don’t attempt—do!” Her words stopped her. It was another one of her mother’s pet phrases.
Incoming, said Wee Hunk.
Incoming? Ellen thought, just as a large, soft object hit her chest and rolled away, nearly dislodging her hold on the helmet. “Eleanor?”
Yes, said Wee Hunk, it was Eleanor.
“Mother!” she cried and let go of the helmet to reach out with both hands, but Eleanor was gone.
Cabinet says that Eleanor sends you her fondest greetings.
At that moment, the erstwhile yacht hit Earth’s surface with such force that Ellen’s body was ripped from her head. So sudden and so stunning was this sensation that she heard neither the discharge of the helmet’s cryonics coils nor the crunch of bone as its collar flange irised shut, neatly nipping off her ragged stump of throat.
2.4
Fifteen minutes later, a dead-man switch inside a meter-long section of rain channel below the rooftop ledge of a gigatower in Indianapolis timed out and closed a circuit. This high up, there were no windows overlooking the ledge, or fixed cameras, or bees or slugs on patrol. The ceramic rain channel began to evaporate like a slab of dry ice. Before long, a miniature launch node lay exposed in the newly formed gap in the ledge. Twenty-seven miniature insectlike mechs were parked on it in a triple row. They perched, checking systems, while their multiple sets of foil wings were buffeted by updrafts of warm air.
One mech, a dazzling bee with a blue gemstone body, revved its wings and lifted off. It was followed by two sleek blue wasps sporting twin laser stingers fore and aft. With the bee in the lead, the team of three spiraled high above the gigatower in a furious whine of wings.
One by one, the other bees rose—a red one, a yellow one, an orange, and a white one. A pair of wasps joined each bee, and the little teams fanned out in separate directions.
Finally, four beetles with bulging carapaces lifted off from the ledge. They labored into the air and wallowed in the currents, waiting for their wasp escorts. When all of the mechs were successfully launched, the node itself began to melt and drip down the side of the building.
2.5
“DNA analysis,” Acting Chair Trina Warbeloo reported to the reconvened Garden Earth board, “confirms Eleanor’s remains at the scene, including, I am reluctant to add, incinerated remains of brain matter. Her daughter’s DNA has also been positively identified, but no brain matter. A deployed safety helmet, believed to contain the daughter’s head, has been retrieved and is being rushed to one of Byron’s clinics.” She nodded to board member Byron Fagan, who acknowledged the statement with a physician’s fey smile. “Let us wish her our best.
“Now,” Warbeloo continued, “I suggest we elect an interim chair until our next regular election. Do I hear a motion?”
“What? Just like that?” Merrill Meewee said. He was the only one still in the boardroom in realbody. The other members attended by holopresence from their various offices and homes. Zoranna was en route to San Francisco and attended from her private Slipstream car deep in the continental grid.
“Sorry, Merrill,” Warbeloo said. “Would you care to offer a few words of remembrance?”
“That’s not what I meant. I think it’s only fitting that we adjourn now and meet after the funeral.”
“Is that a motion?” Warbeloo said.
“Yes,” Meewee replied. “I move we adjourn till after the funeral.”
“Is there a second?”
No one seconded him, and the motion failed. Meewee said, “In that case, I will say a few words.”
He stood up, but Saul Jaspersen said, “Think you can keep it down to three minutes, your holiness?”
Meewee bowed his head and chose to ignore the jibe. “Friends,” he intoned and felt the falseness of the word, “today we have lost a great leader. Twelve years ago, when I was an archbishop for Birthplace International—”
“Amen,” Jaspersen said, cutting him off. “I move we hold an election for interim chair.”
“I second,” said Jerry Chapwoman.
“I was speaking!” Meewee said, but no one paid him any attention, and he sat back down.
There was only one nomination—Saul Jaspersen.
“Any other nominations?” Warbeloo said. “If not—”
Zoranna, nominate me, Meewee pleaded. Zoranna sat across the table from him, strapped into her plush Slipstream seat, hurtling under the Rockies at one thousand kph. She frowned and said, “I nominate Merrill.”
The board voted, and Meewee lost; not even Zoranna voted for him.
Jaspersen’s holo flickered out and reappeared a moment later at the head of the table. “And now to new business,” he said. A scape opened above the large board table in which a dozen Oships were docked together like a roll of candy. Their huge hab drums, emblazoned with Chinese characters, rotated alternately clockwise and counter.
Meewee sputtered. “But, but this isn’t new business! This is the Chinas offer. We rejected it last year!”
“Not exactly accurate,” Jaspersen said. “We favored it, but Eleanor vetoed it, as was her prerogative as senior member. But that was then, and this is now.” He grinned at his own cleverness. “And what was old business is new again.”
“But I’m still here, and I represent Starke Enterprises’ interests,” Meewee said.
“Puh-leez,” Jaspersen said. “You were never more than an honorary member of this board.”
“I have a vote!”
“And we’ll hear your vote. Is there a motion?”
“Yes,” said Chapwoman, “I move we send the five China republics an RFP concerning the sale of GEP Oships.”
“I second,” said Fagan.
Jaspersen said, “Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor—”
“Wait!” said Meewee. “I have discussion. I have plenty of discussion.”
Jaspersen grit his teeth. “All right, your grace. Say your piece, but keep it brief.”
Meewee looked around the table at the arrogant faces. The problem was that he wasn’t like these people at all, and he didn’t know what they thought or how to persuade them. That had always been Eleanor’s great talent. She had recruited him for his ability to talk to poor people, not to the affs. His credibility lay with Earth’s down-trodden and exploited—in other words, with the project’s prospective colonists and passengers—not with its owners.
“The Chinas only want to park our ships in Near Earth Orbit,” he said at last, “for moving their surplus population off-planet.”
“That’s right”—Chapwoman chuckled—“six million of ’em at a pop.”
“But what good does it do Earth to populate the inner solar system?” Meewee went on reasonably. “Their numbers on Earth would be replenished in two or three generations, and meanwhile, we’d only be helping to establish aggressive new competitors for solar system resources. It goes contrary to our mission.”
“Aggressive consumers, you mean,” Trina Warbeloo said. “It seems to me that the flaw in the Garden Earth mission, as you call it, lay in the fact that if we send all these ‘colonists’ off to Ursus Major, how can we trade with them? There’s no market, and where’s the profit in that?”
“The profit in that”—Meewee all but shouted—profit-making was offensive to him—“the profit in that is the land we acquire in exchange for their passage. At this very moment, we have a quarter million colonists cryogenically suspended in our cold storage facilities in the Ukraine prepped for transport up to the Garden Kiev. The moment that that Oship launches, title to a quarter million acres of Eurasia passes to us. That’s our profit.”