“Deacon,” said Carnaby, by way of greeting.
“Archbishop. I’ve received a disturbing report from our man in Ecuador.”
“We have a man in Ecuador?”
“At the skytower project, sir,” said Gillette.
“Ah, yes. A disturbing report, you say?”
“According to Rev. Danvers, the scientists of the skytower project are using a form of nanotechnology to build their structure.”
“Nanotechnololgy!” Carnaby felt a pang of alarm. “Nanomachines are outlawed, even in South America.”
Gillette closed his heavy-lidded eyes briefly, then explained, “They are not using nanomachines, exactly. Instead, they have developed genetically engineered viruses to work as nanomachines would, assembling the structural components of their tower.”
Carnaby felt the cords at the back of his neck tense and knew he would soon be suffering a headache.
“Tell Danvers to notify the authorities down there.”
“What they’re doing is not illegal, Archbishop. They’re using natural creatures, not artificial machines.”
“But you said these creatures have been genetically engineered, didn’t you?”
“Genetic engineering is not outlawed, sir,” Gillette replied, then quickly added, “Unfortunately.”
Carnaby sucked in a breath. “Then what can we do about it?”
With a sad shake of his head, Gillette answered, “I don’t know, sir. I was hoping that you would think of a solution.”
Fumbling for the oxygen mask in the compartment built into the wheelchair’s side, Carnaby groused, “All right, let me think about it.” He abruptly cut the phone connection and his wall returned to its underlying restful shade of pastel blue.
Carnaby held the plastic mask over his face for several silent moments. The flow of cool oxygen eased the tension that was racking his body.
Sudden thunder shook the building, startling Carnaby so badly that he dropped his oxygen mask. Then he realized it was another of those damnable rockets taking off from the old Hartsfield Airport.
He spun his chair to the window once again and craned his dewlapped neck, but there was nothing to see. No trail of smoke. No pillar of fire. The rockets used some kind of clean fueclass="underline" hydrogen, he’d been told. Doesn’t hurt the environment.
He slumped back in his wheelchair, feeling old and tired. I’ve spent my life trying to save their souls. I’ve rescued them from sin and the palpable wrath of God. And what do they do as soon as things begin to go smoothly again? They complain about our strict laws. They want more freedom, more license to grow fat and prosperous and sinful.
Then he looked out at the empty sky again. They’re getting richer because those rockets are bringing in metals and stuff from the asteroids. And they’ve built those infernal solar satellites up in orbit to beam electrical power to the ground.
Those space people. Scientists and engineers. Godless secularists, all of ’em. Poking around on other worlds. Claiming they’ve found living creatures. Contradicting Genesis every chance they get.
And now, Carnaby thought, those space people are building a high-tech Tower of Babel. They’re going to make it easier to get into space, easier to make money out there. And using nanotechnology to do it. Devil’s tools. Evil, through and through.
They’re building their blasphemous tower in South America someplace, right in the middle of all those Catholics.
They’ve got to be stopped, Carnaby told himself, clenching his blue-veined hands into bony fists. But how? How?
RIDING THE ELEVATOR
“How high are we?” Lara asked, her eyes wide with excitement.
Bracknell glanced at the readout screen set next to the elevator’s double doors, where Victor Molina was standing. “Eighty-two kilometers, no, now it’s eighty-three.”
“I don’t feel anything,” she said. “No sense of motion at all.”
For nearly a month Bracknell had resisted Lara’s pleas for a ride in the space elevator. The instant he had told her the first elevator tube had completed all its tests and was officially operational, she had begged him for a ride. Bracknell had temporized, delayed, tried to put her off. To his surprise, he found that he was worried about the elevator’s safety. All these years I’ve drafted the plans, laid out the schematics, overseen the construction, he castigated himself, and when we get right down to it, I don’t trust my own work. Not with Lara’s life. I’m afraid to let her ride the elevator.
That realization stunned him. All the number crunching, all the tests, and I don’t trust my own work. I’m willing to let others ride the elevator, I’m even willing to ride it myself, but when it comes to Lara—I’m afraid. Superstition, pure and simple, he told himself. Yet he found excuses to keep her from his skytower.
The elevator worked fine, day after day, week after week, hauling technicians and cargo up to the stations at the various levels of the tower. Bracknell’s confidence in the system grew, and Lara’s importunings did not abate. If anything, she became even more insistent.
“You’ve been up and down a dozen times,” she whispered to him as they lay together in the shadows of their darkened bedroom, her head on his naked chest. “It’s not fair for you to keep me from going with you. Just once, at least.”
Despite his inner tension, he grinned in the darkness. “It’s not fair? You’re starting to sound like a kid arguing with his parents.”
“Was I whining?” she asked.
“No,” he had to admit. “I’ve never heard you whine.”
She lay silent for several moments. He could feel her breathing slowly, rhythmically, as she lay against him.
“Okay,” he heard himself say. “We’ll go up to the LEO deck,” he conceded.
Lara knew the Low Earth Orbit station was five hundred kilometers up. Her elation was immediately tinged with disappointment.
“Not all the way?” she asked. “Not to the geostationary level?”
Bracknell shook his head. “That’s up on the edge of the Van Allen Belt radiation. The crew hasn’t installed the shielding yet. They work up there in armored suits.”
“But if they—”
“No,” he said firmly, grasping her bare shoulders. “Some day we’re going to have children. I’m not exposing you to a high-radiation environment, even in a shielded spacesuit.”
He sensed her smiling at him. “The ultimate argument,” she said. “It’s for the good of our unborn children.”
“Well, it is.”
“Yes dear,” she teased. Then she kissed him.
They made love slowly, languorously. Afterward, as they lay spent and sticky in their sweaty sheets, Bracknell thought: This is the real test. Do you trust your work enough to risk her life on it?
And Lara understood: He worries about me so. He lets others ride the elevator but he’s worried about me.
The next day was a Sunday, and although a full team of technicians was at work, as usual, Bracknell walked over to the operations office and told the woman on duty there that he and Lara would be riding up to the LEO platform.
The operations chief that Sunday morning was a portly woman who wore her ash-blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun, and a square gold ring on her left middle finger.
“I’ll tell Jakosky,” she said, grinning. “He’s won the lottery.”
“What lottery?” Bracknell asked, surprised.
“We’ve been making book about when you’d let your lady take a ride up,” said the operations chief. “Jackpot’s up to damn near a thousand Yankee dollars.”