Arthur Clarke - Sunstorm

“I want one of those robots to paint my flat.”

He laughed, but it was a bit forced, and she was painfully aware that everybody who came here must make a similar joke.

He said, “The robots and machines and processes are all very well. But the heart of this place is the people.” He glanced at her. “I come from a farming area in Iowa. As a kid I always liked to read stories of blue-collar guys just like my father and his buddies working in space, or on the Moon. Well, it can’t be that way, not for a long time. This is still space, a lethal environment, and the work we’re doing is highly skilled engineering. None of those grease monkeys out there is less qualified than a Ph.D. Blue collar they ain’t, I guess. But they have the heart—you know what I’m saying? They’re working twenty-four seven to get this job done, and some of them have been up here for years already. And without that heart none of this would get done, for all our gadgets.”

“I understand,” she said softly. “Colonel, I’m impressed. And reassured.”

So she was. Siobhan had briefed her well on Bud, but Miriam knew that Siobhan had developed a relationship with him, and one reason for coming here was to make her own assessment. She liked everything she saw about this blunt, can-do American aviator who had become so pivotal to the future of humankind; she was relieved that the project was in such evidently safe hands.

Not that her Eurasian pride would ever have allowed her to admit as much to President Alvarez.

She said, “I hope to meet some of your people later.”

“They will appreciate that.”

“So will I. I’m not going to pretend this isn’t a photo op for me; of course it is. But for better or worse this monstrous edifice will be my legacy. I was determined to come see it, and the people who are building it, before they kick me out.”

Bud nodded gravely. “We follow the polls too. I can’t believe how bad they are for you.” He smacked his fist against his palm. “They should send their damn questionnaires up here. ”

She was touched. “It’s the way it goes, Colonel. The polls show people are broadly behind the shield project. But they are also suffering endless disruption because of all the wealth that is flowing off the planet and up here to this great orbiting sink of money. They want the shield, but they don’t like having to pay for it—and perhaps, beneath it all, they resent being faced with the threat of the sunstorm in the first place.”

Nicolaus grunted. “It is classic barroom psychology. When faced with bad news, after the denial comes the anger.”

Bud said, “So they need somebody to blame?”

“Something like that,” Miriam said. “Or perhaps they’re right. The shield will go on, whatever happens to me; we’ve gone too far to change direction now. But as for me—you know, Churchill lost an election right after winning the Second World War. The people judged he had done his job. Maybe my successor will do a better job of easing the day-to-day pain than I can.” And maybe, she wondered, the people sensed just how exhausted she was, how much this job had taken out of her—and how little she had left to give.

Nicolaus grunted. “You’re too philosophical, Miriam.”

“Yeah,” Bud growled. “What a dumb time to call an election! Maybe it should be postponed for a couple of years—”

“No,” she said firmly. “Oh, I suspect martial law will come to the cities before this is done. But democracy is our most important possession. If we throw it away when the going gets tough, we might never get it back—and then we’ll end up like the Chinese.”

Bud glanced sideways at Nicolaus, the furtive look of a man who had grown used to working under conditions of security. “Speaking of which—as you know we’re monitoring the Chinese from up here.”

“There have been more launches?”

“On a good day you can see them with the naked eye. You can’t hide the firing of a Long March booster. But no matter how we try, we can’t trace them after launch, by optical means, radar—we even tried bouncing laser beams off them.”

“Stealth technology?”

“We think so.”

It had been going on for a year: a massive and continuing program of space launches from China’s echoing interior, one huge mass after another hurled into the silence of space, their destination unknown. Miriam herself had been involved in efforts to figure out what was going on; the Chinese premier had deflected her probing without so much as raising a dyed eyebrow.

She said, “Anyhow it makes no difference to us.”

“Maybe,” Bud said. “But it pains me to think we’re laboring up here to save their skinny ungrateful butts too. Pardon my language.”

“You mustn’t think that way. Just remember, the mass of the people in China have little or no idea what their leaders are up to, and even less control. It’s them you are working for, not those gerontocrats in Beijing.”

He grinned. “I guess you’re right. You see, this is why you’d get my vote.”

“Sure I would …”

He pointed. “If you look up, you can see what it’s all about.”

She had to bend down to see.

There was the Earth. It was a blue lantern hanging directly opposite the position of the sun. Miriam was a million and a half kilometers from home, and from here the planet looked about the size of the Moon from Earth. And it was full, of course; Earth always was, as seen from here at L1, suspended between Earth and sun.

Earth hung low over the shield itself, and its pale blue light glistened from a glassy floor that stretched to a horizon that was already vanishingly distant. The emerging shield had yet to be positioned so that its face was correctly turned toward the sun; that would come in the final days before the sunstorm was due.

It was an astounding, beautiful sight, and it was almost impossible to believe that mere humans had made this thing, here in the depths of space.

On a warm impulse she turned to her press secretary. “Nicolaus, forget the damn cameras. You must see this view …”

He was cowering against the rear bulkhead of the chamber, his face twisted with an anguish she had never seen in him before. He rapidly composed himself. But it was an expression she would think of again, three days later, as Boudicca made its last descent to Earth.

On the way out of the observation deck, Miriam noticed a plaque, hastily carved from a bit of lunar glass:

ARMAGEDDON POSTPONED

COURTESY OF

U.S. ASTRONAUTICAL ENGINEERING CORPS

For the reentry into Earth’s atmosphere aboard the spaceplane, Nicolaus chose to sit beside Miriam. He seemed stiff and rather silent, as he had been all the way back from the shield, and indeed for much of their time up there.

But Miriam, though she knew she was exhausted on some deep level, felt good. She stretched luxuriously. The big softscreens around her showed the broad blue-gray face of Earth below, and a pink glow building up at the leading edge of Boudicca ’s stubby wings as they bit into the thickening air. But there was no real sense of deceleration, only the mildest of vibrations, a tickle of pressure at her chest. It was all remarkably beautiful, and comfortable. “After seven days in space I feel wonderful, ” she said. “I could get used to this. What a shame it’s over.”

“All things must end.”

There was something odd in Nicolaus’s tone. She looked at him, but though his posture remained stiff his face was blank. A distant alarm bell rang in her head.

She looked past Nicolaus across the narrow aisle to see Captain Purcell, who had been quiet for a while. Purcell’s head was lolling like a puppet’s.