Olefin nodded, at something. “How'd you like another long-term job instead?”
Chaim sat up, not hiding his eagerness. “Doing what—prospecting?”
“Conducting a media campaign.”
Dartagnan slumped forward, oddly disappointed. “That's—a hell of a compliment, from a total stranger. Are you sure you mean it? And what kind of a campaign—what are you planning to sell?”
“Planet Two.”
Dartagnan sat up straight again. “What?”
“The colonizing of Planet Two from the Demarchy.”
Geez Allah: a job offer from a maniac. A rich maniac.… He reached for his camera. At least this won't be dull—
“Let's forget about that thing for a while—” Olefin shook his head. “I'll talk to it all you want, if you accept the job. But hear me out, before you type me as a crank.”
Chaim grinned sheepishly. “Whatever you say.” He toyed with the lens, aiming it where it lay; he jammed the trigger ON. A sound pierced his left eardrum, barely audible even to him, at the extreme upper end of the register. He gambled that Olefin's hearing wasn't good enough to pick it up. More than one way to get a good interview … a job in the hands worth two in the offing. “Okay, then, would you care to expand on your reasons for wanting to establish a colony on a hellhole like Planet Two?” He settled back, hands massaging his injured leg.
Olefin laughed, sobered. “How many megaseconds would you estimate Heaven Belt has left?”
Dartagnan looked at him blankly. “Before what?”
“Before civilization collapses entirely; before we all join the hundred million people who died right after the Civil War.”
Dartagnan remembered Mecca City, a manmade geode in the heart of the rock, towers like crystal growths in every imaginable shading of jewel color. He tried to imagine it as a place of death, and failed. “I don't know about the scavengers back in the Main Belt, but I don't see any reason why the Demarchy can't go on forever, just like it always has.”
“Don't you? … No. I suppose you don't. Nobody does. I suppose they don't want to face the inevitability of death. And who am I to blame them?”
“We all have to die someday.”
“But who really believes that? Maybe the fact that Esso was wiped out by the war, the fact that I was squandering literally the last of the family fortune, made me see it so clearly: that humanity's existence here has a finite end; and that end's in sight. Speaking of making mistakes, we made a hell of a big one—the Civil War—and one mistake in Heaven and you're damned forever. Damned dead.…
“Existing in an asteroid belt depends entirely on an artificial ecosystem. Everything that's vital for life, we have to process or make ourselves—air, water, food; everything. But like any other ecosystem—more than most—you destroy enough of it, and nothing that's left can survive for long. It has to retreat, or die. Back in the Solar Belt they had Earth to retreat to, if they needed it, where everything necessary for life happened naturally. But at the time Heaven was colonized, this hadn't happened to them, so they didn't foresee the need. When the old Belters colonized this system, they figured that the raw elements—the ores and the minerals, the frozen gases around Discus—were all they had to have. Never occurred to anyone that sometime they wouldn't be able to process them.
“But that's what happened. Most of the capital industry in Heaven was destroyed during the war. What we've got left is barely adequate, and there's no way we can expand or even replace it. Hell, the Ringers are hardly surviving now, and if they go under I don't know how our own distilleries are going to make it.… How good are you at holding your breath?”
Dartagnan laughed uneasily. “But—” He groped for a rebuttal, found his mind empty, like his sudden vision of the future. “But—all right. So maybe you're right, we are sliding downhill to the end.… If there's nothing we can do to save ourselves, why worry about it? Just make the best of what we've got, while we've still got it.”
“But that's the point! There is something we can do—starting now, we can establish a colony here on Planet Two, against the time when technology fails and the Demarchy can't support us anymore.”
“I don't see the point.” Dartagnan shook his head. “It's even harder to stay alive here than out in space. Even in a suit, you'd freeze to death! The atmosphere sucks the warmth out of you, even now, when the sun's up. And the gravity—”
“Gravity here's only a quarter what the human body was built to withstand. As for the cold—our equipment wasn't designed to deal with it, but it'd be easy enough to adapt; all we need is better insulation. This's no worse than parts of old Earth. Antarctica, for instance. No warmer than this, and snow up to here; but they didn't mind. The greatest thing human beings have going for them is adaptability! If those dirt-siders could do it, a Belter can do it.” Olefin's hands leaped with emphasis, his eyes gleaming like agate, lit by an inner vision. “In fact, part of my idea for a media campaign would be to rename this planet Antarctica: ‘Return to nature, cast off the artificial environment; live the way man was meant to live’—”
“I don't know.…” Dartagnan's head moved again in negation. “You sure this place is no colder than Earth? Besides, the atmosphere's still unbreathable.”
“But it's not! That's one of the most crucial points the public has to be made aware of. One of the experimental projects here was a study of the atmospheric conditions—and it proved conclusively that the atmosphere of this world is denser than it was when we first came into the system. The way the various periodicities of its orbit add up right now is causing the polar caps to melt, freeing the gases. The atmosphere's thin and dry compared to what we're used to, but it's breathable. I know; I've tried it.”
“For how long?” Dartagnan felt a sudden constricted panic at the thought of trying to breathe an alien atmosphere; his hand rose to his throat. “How's that possible? How could there be enough free oxygen?”
“Don't know. But there is; I've been out two, three kilosecs at a time.”
Dartagnan looked down, polishing the polish on the worn vinyl of his boot. “You'd have to live underground, I suppose; help to conserve heat. But we do that anyhow. And solar power—it's a lot closer in to the sun.…”
“There, you see!” Olefin nodded eagerly. “You're starting to see the possibilities. It's the answer; we had to find an answer, and this is it. This can make your career! With the money I make off of this salvage sale, we can launch a media campaign that'll convert the entire Demarchy. What do you say, Dartagnan?”
Chaim stopped polishing, kept his face averted. “I want a chance to think over what you told me first, Demarch Sekka-Olefin. I still can't really see this place as the Garden of Allah.… I'll give you my answer before we lift off, all right?” He realized that the real question he needed an answer to was whether this was what he wanted to do with the rest of his life … or whether he really had any choice. But a kind of excitement rose in him like desire, filling the void Olefin's future had created, with the knowledge that if he sold himself to Sekka-Olefin, he might not be selling out at all.
“Fair enough.…” Olefin was saying, smiling, as though he already had his answer. “I expect my numerous blood-sucking relations are going to be prostrate with grief when they hear about my plans for this salvage money. They didn't appreciate my spending what was left of the family inheritance on this project; I didn't name that ship out there; they named it, after me.…” He laughed at his own joke. “And my mother-ship up there in orbit isn't called the Mother for nothing.”