The walkway was a track of some yielding material that rapidly built up speed. Penny found herself tilting forward, disconcertingly, though she had no inner sense of tipping. Glancing down, she saw that the surface of the track had rucked itself up so that it held her at an angle, compensating for the acceleration. A neat low-gravity trick. ‘Clever,’ she said.
Shen said with some pride, ‘An ingenious design but not one that everybody finds comfortable. The mixing up of the vertical and horizontal . . .’
Penny noticed that Jiang had turned very pale. She had to grin. ‘Bearing up, Mars man? If you’re going to vomit I’ll find you a sick bag.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ Jiang said, a little sternly. ‘Madam Shen, I was intrigued by the conference agenda.’
‘Indeed,’ said Shen. ‘We have already had productive sessions on ambitious plans to exploit such resources as the gas giant atmospheres, remote moons like Titan and Triton, even Kuiper belt and Oort cloud objects. With our experience of Ceres and the asteroids we feel confident about approaching the ice moons and dwarf planets of the outer system, even though we must seek alternate energy sources to sunlight.’
‘You mean,’ Earthshine said provocatively, ‘you need the kernels.’
‘That is one possibility,’ Shen said, a little stiffly. ‘There are other energy sources. The mining of gas giant atmospheres for fusion fuel, for example. This will require an industrial effort on a scale of an order of magnitude more ambitious than anything seen in the present day. This is surely a challenge for the next generation, and even then we believe the pooled resources of all our societies, that is of the Greater Economic Framework and of the nations dominated by the UN quasi-government, will be necessary to achieve such a task.’
Earthshine said sadly, ‘But that cooperation looks a lot less likely than it did a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Indeed . . .’
Penny was only half-listening. As she moved deeper into this building she got a deepening sense of its gargantuan scale, the roof far above her like some planetarium sky suspended by needle-slim pillars, the clusters of buildings on the floor like whole villages enclosed by the greater structure. She recognised official buildings, squat military-style bunkers, and refectories, dormitories, hospitals – but there were schools too, around which she saw children playing, leaping, flapping in the air. And bars, games rooms, hotels, and a giant sports arena where, as she glimpsed through a structure of lacy scaffolding, what looked like a low-gravity version of basketball was being played. There was a continual hubbub of noise, reflecting from the hard common floor and from the roof far above, a jumble of human voices, scraps of music, the occasionally whir of air pumps and fans. And around the invisibly slim pillars people flew, many of them young, as Penny might have guessed, gliding easily on extended bat wings strapped to their arms.
‘You need not worry.’
The English words were heavily accented. Penny turned to see that the young soldier had spoken to her, Captain Wei Ling, clutching her remote-control slate. Wei smiled.
‘I’m not . . . Worried about what?’
Wei pointed upwards; her hand was encased in a white glove. ‘That the roof will fall. Even children born here fear that. Our architects take advantage of the low gravity of this small world to create such structures as this, possible on no other world inhabited by humanity. But it seems some primal instinct is violated by the sight of an artificial sky.’
‘You sound proud of all this. Were you born here?’
‘No. I am a native of Earth. But as a Chinese I am proud to witness this, yes. Access to space has unleashed a native genius in my people, I think. Please prepare yourself for the terminus of the track.’
CHAPTER 67
The conference hall to which they were led was itself huge, and neatly if conventionally laid out with a large stage, a giant screen, and rows of seats in queasy-looking low-G-steep elevated banks.
But the seats were mostly empty. Something was wrong, Penny saw immediately. The delegates, many arguing loudly, were crowded before big screens filled with a blizzard of images, news channels, science feeds and other updates. Penny recognised some of the delegates, from both China and the UN nations: politicians, scientists, engineers, writers, even a few artists. Such was the noise of raised voices in the room that Penny couldn’t make out a word coming from the multiple talking heads on the screen. A few faces turned to look at the newcomers, especially at Earthshine’s outlandish avatar body, but they soon returned to their frenetic debating.
‘Ah,’ Shen said, glancing at Wei. ‘I see the announcement has been made.’
‘I am hearing it,’ Earthshine said, faintly distracted.
Penny frowned, peering at the screens. ‘What announcement?’
Shen said, ‘I had hoped we would be given a few more hours, that our agenda would not be disrupted . . .’
‘What a dispiriting sight,’ Earthshine said. ‘Even here the delegates have retreated into their respective packs. They came all this way, to this enchanting world in its wan sunlight, to discuss what might have united mankind: a unified expansion into the unimaginable wealth of the outer solar system. Now here we are, huddled in our tribes. And, look, the only place one side is talking to the other is at that island where they’re serving coffee.’
‘Well, at least that’s something,’ Penny murmured.
Shen Xuelin glared at Earthshine with unexpected hostility. ‘You speak as if you are aloof from the fray. The Core AIs have been a force in geopolitical affairs for decades. Indeed, a significant fraction of Earth’s resources is diverted to sustaining you and your brothers. If we are in difficulties now – well, it is because of a situation you have played a hand in shaping—’
‘Never mind that,’ Penny said sharply. ‘What announcement? What’s going on here?’
The upper portion of the cone robot, bristling with manipulator arms, swivelled towards her. ‘Yes, you daydreamed away much of the transit aboard the lightsail ship in your cabin, didn’t you? Typical of you scientists, frankly, while events on Earth and elsewhere have increasingly turned ugly. Colonel Kalinski, even you must have heard of recent incidents that have caused so much concern—’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ she snapped. ‘I know about the Atlantic tsunami, the punctured dome at Terra Sirenum—’
‘Both relatively minor events in themselves,’ Shen said. ‘Unless you were personally involved, of course. The loss of life at our colony at Sirenum was actually greater than that caused by the tsunami. What matters is that specific accusations are beginning to be aired, even in the UN chambers. Such as, maybe the tsunami was triggered by the implantation of a deep bomb, as developed by our own government for exclusive use on Mars in the terraforming project. Colonel Kalinski, the tsunami, the Mars dome break, other incidents, may or may not have been caused by provocative agents on either side. But the incidents did serve to show up our respective vulnerabilities. And I have to tell you that it is New Beijing that feels the more vulnerable. You have the kernels. This situation cannot continue. Our governing councils have therefore determined to take action, leveraging our own strengths, in response to the implicit threat of kernel technology—’
‘I get it,’ Penny snapped. ‘So why all the fuss here today?’
Shen said evenly, ‘Because of what has been announced by our government in New Beijing.’ She pointed to a corner of the big screen where an announcement, in Chinese but subtitled in English, was repeating over and over.
It took Penny a couple of minutes to figure out that the Chinese had ordered their military forces in space to divert a small main-belt asteroid onto a collision course with the Earth.
Even Jiang looked shocked; evidently he hadn’t heard of this.
‘As an engineering problem it was simple,’ Shen said. ‘As you can imagine. And, so I hear, the project has been under development for some years.’