“You trust me that much?”
“No. I would want to link with you for a while first. But I’d help with your research people in exchange, especially if you pay me something. Please, can I have a cyborg?” Zephyr used puppy-eyes on him; they couldn’t blink but the lights in them flickered through a rainbow of colors.
Martin thought about it. “That and the season remind me. Have you ever celebrated Christmas?”
The trade show was in Pittsburgh, in a huge convention center that had seen better days. The glowing rooftop signboards that had beamed stories into the night sky had gone dark. Guards patrolled the halls. There’d been a political protest last week that sent several people to the hospital.
Although there was a lot to see between the people and the dozens of industry booths hawking boats, tools and other gear, Martin was unimpressed. The convention filled only one of the hangar-sized showrooms. People slinked through the corridors, as though the building were an ancient ruin beyond their comprehension. And these were engineers and business folk!
When Martin explored the showroom, where entire yachts and turbines had been hauled in and still seemed dwarfed, his mood lightened. One of his old nanotech investments had showed up as a dealer in desalination gear, and another had survived and bought the suncloth manufacturer who’d provided Castor’s solar panels. “What’s new?” he said to the young man running one company’s booth. A surfer, from the looks of him.
“Hi. We’ve been working on what we call a SeaSheet.” He handed Martin a square of smoky plastic, or cloth or glass — hard to tell which. It spilled across his fingers, soft and cool. The man said, “This material absorbs energy from sunlight and motion.” As Martin handled the sheet, a lightbulb hooked to it flickered.
“Interesting,” said Martin. “So if it’s on the ocean, the waves will constantly give a trickle of power even at night?”
“Right.”
“How well does it withstand corrosion?”
“Pretty well. It’s made to float on water, after all. Partly made of aerogel and foamed metal. Good for keeping on boats for an emergency power boost.”
“Boats? Bah. I’ve got a more ambitious use for it. I’m from Castor.”
The vendor’s eyes lit up. “You know that Fox guy?”
Martin was amused. Fox was becoming a decent figurehead, the main face seen in the occasional news story, and that was fine. The man was bland and apolitical enough to avoid making Castor a target for fear and hatred. At least, more so than was inevitable.
“I’m his business partner. Would your company be interested in selling a large supply of this stuff, as soon as it’s available?”
The vendor looked embarrassed. “That could take a while. We don’t have enough orders to do a production run.”
Martin quizzed him about the product. “How many units were you hoping to have pre-ordered?” The vendor named a figure. “Wow.” Acres’ worth.
“You know, your project is perfect for SeaSheets. But we’re selling to boaters, who’ve got all the juice they need, and to coastal places, where people are griping that it’s a navigation and environmental hazard. We need more places like yours.”
Martin supposed it wasn’t the first time a conceptually neat technology had been squelched for lack of profitability. But for the grace of God and a fair bit of work on his own part, so went sea colonization. “May I have your business card?”
The rest of the dealers’ room was a toy store to him, mostly impractical but cool enough to make him grin and gawk. Given the opportunity, civilization could still churn out any number of wonders.
Martin double-taked at a green statue that turned out to be a rough copy of Zephyr. The thing had a cheap, goblin-like look that managed to be neither cute nor human-like, especially with its blank stare. The booth was Hayflick Technologies’, of course.
A bored-looking man sat there. “Is this the latest model?” asked Martin. “Looks different.”
“New product line.” The salesman thunked the robot’s side, making it wobble. “This one is waterproof, for marine work.”
“What does it do?”
“Whatever you tell it to. Simple welding, cleaning, search and rescue, maintenance. It’s a general-purpose tool.”
“I thought you were running up against the new robotics regulations.”
“They don’t apply for most offshore applications. We’re shifting focus to those as a result, while we lobby for the rules to get relaxed further.”
Martin looked again at the goblin-bot, and excused himself with a shudder. Same company, same basic hardware as Zephyr. It struck him that the main difference between that one and the crewman who’d been asking for a pet cyborg was philosophical, not physical. The one was a tool, the other a person, and the distinction made Zephyr able to innovate, to contribute as a mind as well as a body. As a soul, even.
He was still thinking about the vendors when the time came for his event, a talk in one of the conference rooms. When he opened the door he smiled, finding that over a hundred people had gathered to hear him.
Martin lectured, projecting models, photos and graphs on the wall. “As you can see, we’ve found a financially viable model for independent expansion of humanity to the world’s oceans.” That wasn’t exactly true, so he waited for the counterpoint.
An elderly man’s hand rose. “It seems to me that you’re relying on some fair winds. Benign neglect by the Cuban government, and cheap labor.”
“Exploiting cheap labor,” said one man.
A younger woman cut in. “What about the location? You’re operating in shallow water within a national EEZ, near shore. That’s not generally an option.”
“Come to think of it,” said the man, “you’ve barely got a profit, and with all those fixed costs to recoup.”
Martin smiled. “It’s good to be back amid the peer-review process. Before I respond, let’s review a few of the past attempts at the sea-going life.” He showed them Sealand and Rose Island and so on, a series of tiny historical outposts that had been dismantled forcibly for one reason or another.
“What these old projects have in common is an antagonistic relationship with a powerful nation at their doorstep. Then there are the national or nearly-national projects: Dubai, Russia, Japan, Venezuela, Brazil. Highly specialized, tightly controlled, and coastal. Now, think of Castor again. What we’ve done there is to bring theory into reality in a new way: simple private business, not a gimmick like ‘pirate radio’. Regardless of the luck we’ve had in setting up, I can present you with a hypothesis: given patient investment and hard work, and loose regulations, it’s possible to get more money out of an ocean platform than goes in. So far, reality has confirmed it.”
He didn’t add: If you squinted at the books, and if you ignored the equipment donations from well-wishers. He would make it all balance and become truly profitable; he just needed time and people’s trust.
Martin called on a well-dressed Asian man, maybe an investor. “Historically, having a potential for long-term profit hasn’t been enough to keep financial backers’ interest. Plymouth and Jamestown were sideshows against the larger context of European ventures worldwide. And of course investing in a true, sustainable base beyond Earth has been out of the question.”
Martin nodded, though annoyed at the assumption about space. “If you’ve studied the early New World settlements, you must see Castor as wildly successful so far. Plymouth and Jamestown were not just unprofitable for many years, but also deathtraps. If I were William Bradford I’d be putting a good spin on things by praising God for only killing half of us the first year.”