Майкл Крайтон - The Andromeda Evolution

“It’s like a cathedral,” mused Stone, standing and stretching. His low voice echoed into the heights, and indeed he felt a reverence that was almost religious. The feeling, however, was laced through with a sickening fear. “What could it be for?”

“This is what the dam is meant to power,” said Vedala. “It’s also the only man-made equipment I’ve seen besides the turbines.”

Stone approached the steel platform. He felt a warm hand take his and looked down to see Tupa. The boy had been through a lot in the last two days, but right now his expression was one of curiosity. It was an impulse that James Stone shared. Together, they walked slowly toward the center of the room.

The man-made platform was floored with metal grating, and it wrapped completely around the central hexagonal pillar. Footings had been placed around the edges, perhaps to support an enclosure that hadn’t been fully installed yet. The rest of the room was littered with wooden crates. Some containers had been opened and emptied, but others were still wrapped in heavy canvas, stained with mud and water. It looked as though they had been parachuted into the jungle, along with the rest of the equipment used in the power station.

“Whatever it is,” said Stone, “it isn’t completely finished.”

Vedala was already standing on the platform. Her head tilted back in awe, she was looking up through the hole in the ceiling. For an instant, Stone found himself thinking she was beautiful there, captured in the dim light falling from above, her smiling face bright beneath a tangle of reddish-black hair.

“What do you see?” he asked, approaching.

“Something that’s never existed on this planet before,” she replied.

Joining her on the platform, Stone gazed upward.

The shaft and the central pillar housed within it proceeded upward for what looked like a mile. At the top, a pale blue dot of sky shone.

“How . . .” asked Stone, trailing off.

“It must have been growing, along with the rest of the anomaly,” said Vedala.

A speck of cloud passed far overhead, and they felt the room cool slightly. Their hands found each other. Standing together, the two scientists silently contemplated the wonder of this structure.

“Jahmays,” said Tupa.

The boy was sitting on a rolling office chair in front of an instrument panel. It had been fitted against the far wall like a long desk, with exterior conduit running to the central platform. Self-consciously letting their hands go, the scientists joined the boy.

“It’s a control panel,” said Vedala, running her fingers along the metal surface. She studied the simple scattering of buttons and levers for a long moment, frowning. Finally, she turned a key and flipped a switch.

The panel lit up and began to hum. Tupa shot back in his rolling chair, cackling with surprised laughter as it rolled smoothly over the floor.

“It’s got power,” said Vedala. “Maybe that platform spins like a centrifuge? Or the spire could be some kind of communications antenna?”

“No, that doesn’t seem right,” responded Stone. “Why would it need so much electricity? Why build a million-ton structure and leave it under a lake? None of this makes any damn sense. Maybe Odhiambo would know . . .”

Stone stopped, remembering the last squeeze of his arm, the feel of losing his friend in the cold black water.

“It’s okay,” said Vedala, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to figure this out. Who better than us?”

Stone smiled ruefully. “A couple of overeducated scientists? You’re right. Who better?”

“Jahmays,” called Tupa.

The boy was using a metal bar to paddle himself across the room in the desk chair. Rowing toward them, he looked utterly ridiculous. Nonetheless, he had a very serious look on his young face as he slid out of the chair and put down the improvised oar.

Tupa pointed at the spire, then looked back at them.

Using his hands, Tupa drew a vertical line in the air, then moved his hands up and down the imaginary length of it, clenching and unclenching his hands as if he were climbing a rope.

Stone stared, uncomprehending. He glanced over at the last canary drone where it lay like a dead bird, beyond repair. He shook his head.

“Rope?” ventured Vedala.

Tupa smiled, pointing again at the central pillar that rose through the shaft and then continuing his gesture.

“I don’t understand. Why rope? What’s it for?” asked Stone.

Tupa shook his head and spoke slowly in his own language, still moving his hands in a climbing motion.

“A rope,” said Vedala, making a similar motion, “is to climb.”

“Climb,” said Stone, miming the gesture and then putting his hands up in a shrug. “To where, Tupa?”

Beaming, Tupa pointed straight up. He stood on his tiptoes, stretching his entire body taut and pointing as high as possible. Then he began to wiggle his fingers over his head, lowering them, watching the scientists with wide eyes.

The boy stopped, seeming very proud of himself.

“The stars,” said Vedala, an astonished smile growing on her face. Vedala turned to Stone. “A rope to climb to the stars.

“The kid is right,” she said. “That spire is a tether. It’s meant to connect to a rope hanging down from the heavens.

“Kline has built a space elevator.”

Finger of God

AMATEUR REPORTS OF A FIRE IN THE SKY WERE INITIALLY dismissed out of hand by major news agencies. Sporadic messages on social media were ignored. It was the now-infamous “finger of God” video that finally caught the world’s attention.

The shaky seven minutes of footage was taken from a smartphone held in the sweaty palm of Sra. Rosa Maria Veloso. She was on a flight from Buenos Aires to Tapatinga to visit her sister and nephews. That morning, TAM Flight 401 happened to be crossing over the Amazon jungle at an altitude of approximately thirty-five thousand feet. The sunrise—Sra. Veloso’s intended subject—was spectacular, painting the endless canopy below in daubs of fire and shadow.

But it was not the reason this video went viral.

“Dios mío” could be heard, repeated by different voices around the plane.

Just above the starboard wing, a miles-long curve of red light was slowly rippling across the upper atmosphere. Shining like a rind of flame, the arc resembled a crack in the dome of the heavens. It flowed downward like a molten waterfall, tracing its way across the sky as it continued to grow.

The miraculous material had accumulated many tons of mass at this point. Only a few atoms thick and as wide as a sheet of paper, it had grown to an incredible length of over twenty thousand miles. Visible only as a streak of light, it hung like a mirage, seeming to waver without moving.

It was a sight that many on board Flight TAM 401 would go on to describe as “biblical.”

And yet the ribbon had been built by a mortal woman.

Composed of AS-3, the tether was shimmering as it reproduced itself at an astonishing pace. On reviewing the “finger of God” footage, experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory theorized that the Andromeda Strain was fueling itself by consuming molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere.

Seismic data collected from Brazilian radar installations placed along the border of Peru were also able to confirm that the ribbon was producing a continuous sonic boom along an entire fifteen-mile segment—a crackling thunder that was faintly audible across much of the southern hemisphere.

The top of the ribbon descended from a gleaming dot, visible from the ground only through telescopes. It was the International Space Station, located just beyond geostationary orbit over this exact point on the equator, and supporting the mass of the ribbon with the centrifugal force of its five-hundred-ton bulk. Kline had long since activated the Progress cargo module thrusters, as well as those of the solar electric propulsion device, pushing the ISS through a classic Hohmann transfer orbit and into this special position.