Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

“It wouldn’t move like the bogey from an airplane.”

“Nah. It goes straight up! So on a radar screen it doesn’t even move. Probably just looks like a dead pixel.”

“What about when the shell is gliding down?”

“Moves differently then, of course. But we do that mostly over Mexican airspace. I’m working out an understanding with our friends south of the border. On final approach, after the shell has dropped below the radar, only then do we let it glide north over the Rio Grande. It re-enters U.S. airspace below the altitude where the FAA gives a shit and lands on Flying S property.”

Rufus considered it. “How about military radar? They gotta know.”

T.R. checked his watch and Rufus knew he’d gone somewhere he shouldn’t have. “None of my business,” Rufus conceded, “just working it out in my head.”

“You’re army. Not air force. A ground pounder. Not a flyboy. Let’s talk about that.”

“Okay, let’s do.”

“I want you to go to the Flying S Ranch—assuming I can make it worth your while, of course. I would feel better if you were there keeping an eye on things. I want you to be the Drone Ranger.”

T.R. had coined that term earlier and Rufus had gotten the feeling that it might stick. He smiled. “You want ol’ Red to keep an eye on, what, a couple of thousand square miles?”

“I got other resources, as you know. Imaging satellites passing over at all hours. Plenty of boots on the ground.”

“Brown hats and black hats.”

T.R. nodded. “Brown hats you could think of as cops. Black hats are your mercenaries—the equivalent of the military. But the Lone Ranger—he was neither fish nor fowl!”

Rufus laughed. “You want me in a white hat?”

“Wear whatever you want. The black mask and the blue jumpsuit are optional. I imagine you’ll be in an earthsuit much of the time.”

“What do you imagine I could do that ain’t being done already with the resources you got on hand?”

“Roam around and notice anything that don’t feel right. Respond to inquiries. Just keep an eye on things. It’s a burden, Red, to own property.”

“I farmed fifty acres,” Rufus said. “I know.”

“You lie awake at night wondering what the hell’s going on there.”

“Yup, you do.”

“That’s why we have caretakers. Ranch hands. Oh, sure there’s always chores to keep that kinda person busy. But the real reason to hire people like that is so we can sleep better at night. Because then we know that there is intelligence—active intelligent minds—right there on the ground.”

Rufus nodded. “Now, let’s talk straight about one thing. You ain’t worried about no wild pigs. Coyotes. Rattlesnakes.”

T.R. managed to look as if he were glad Rufus had finally brought this topic up. “Pina2bo is going to change the world, Red. It’s gonna change it for the better, overall. The people of places like Houston, Venice, Singapore—they’ll feel the most benefit. It will benefit those places unambiguously by stopping sea level rise in its tracks. Now, there’s other countries in this world that are gonna have more pros and cons to think about.” T.R. set his coffee mug down so that he could make a scale pan juggling motion with empty hands. “Less coastal flooding—great! Colder winters. Not so great. But, overall”—he let one hand drop to his knee as the other floated up—“an acceptable trade. But. But. There is going to be a third category of country. Hopefully a small category.” He reversed the positions of his hands, letting the high one drop to his knee, raising the other and turning it into a fist. “They are gonna run the numbers. By which I mean they are gonna run big computer sims to evaluate the effect that Pina2bo will have on their climate. Their economy.” T.R. paused for a second and blinked. “And they are gonna be pissed .”

Rufus nodded. “And depending on what kind of country they are, maybe it’s limited to, I don’t know, filing a complaint with the United Nations.”

“Which wouldn’t do shit,” T.R. said. “But other countries—who knows, maybe they got snake eaters of their own.”

“You’re worried about espionage. Maybe sabotage.”

“Yup. And there’s always the fucking Greens. The remote and wide-open nature of the Flying S Ranch, its location on the Rio Grande, cuts both ways. It enables us to fire giant bullets straight up into the stratosphere without anyone even noticing. But it also makes it easy to infiltrate, easy to spy on, easy to mess with.”

“I’d do it with drones,” Rufus said. “If I was one of the bad guys, I mean, looking for a way to fuck you up.”

“Of course you would. Maybe part of what you can do is be a red team for us—heh! Think of how an adversary would use drones, anticipate their moves, develop countermeasures. Shit, I don’t know!” T.R. checked his watch. The hard stop was drawing nigh. “That’s kinda the point of hiring intelligent people, Red. You don’t exactly know what they’re gonna think of.”

Rufus nodded. “Reckon I’ll head over that way and have a look round.”

T.R. brightened. “To the Flying S?”

Rufus nodded. “I’ll be sure and put out the fire before I leave.”

NEDERLAND

The last two hours of the flight to Schiphol featured some of the worst turbulence Saskia had ever experienced. She very much wished she was in the business jet’s cockpit, where she would have enjoyed a better view of the horizon and some sense of being in control. The great circle route from Texas scissored across a storm that was pouring down the gap between Norway and Britain and scheduled to hit the Netherlands coast early in the morning local time. Finally they ranged out ahead of it, though, and made the final descent and landing in calm air. She was glad she’d taken the advice to advance the timing of their departure from the airstrip at Flying S.

Queen Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia passed through immigration formalities like anybody else inside the main terminal at Schiphol. This reminded her that they had never formally entered the United States. Had Willem somehow smoothed that over? Or was it still a dangling loose end? If so, did it really matter now that they were back on Dutch soil? These questions caused her to review in her mind all that had happened in the last week, beginning with the pigs on the runway and culminating with totally satisfactory casual sex with Rufus last night on an antique railway carriage in a high desert valley in the wilds of West Texas. Walking through Schiphol, dazed from jet lag and still queasy from turbulence, surrounded by Dutch voices and the familiar reality of her homeland, Queen Frederika found it almost impossible to believe that all that had really happened.

Within a few minutes they were in a car headed toward The Hague, and by two in the morning Saskia was back in the familiar confines of Huis ten Bosch. Lotte had already gone to sleep. On Saskia’s biological clock it was early evening. Moreover, she had made the tactical error of napping on the plane. She took a stroll around the grounds. Stars and a half-moon were visible in the south, but the northern half of the sky was a dark indigo blur as clouds, invisible in the dark, swept across it in advance of the summer storm. A faint hiss, building toward a roar, reached her ears from the ancient forest all around as the tops of the great trees, thick with late summer foliage, began to seethe and toss in the rising wind. Part of Saskia just wanted to pull up a chair and sit in the open and let the weather wash over her, but finally she was beginning to feel a little drowsy. She went inside and climbed at last into her own bed.

If it made sense to speak of a typical disaster, then this sounded as if it had been one of those until about halfway through breakfast. Wind and waves had first struck Frisia in the north and then worked their way down the coast. The occasional rogue wave had overtopped a dike, but none of the coastal defenses had been breached. Here and there, trees were down, roads awash, trucks and caravans flipped on their sides. To all appearances, it looked like Saskia would be headed to wherever her presence might actually be helpful. This, however, probably meant simply waiting until tomorrow. Showing up right on the heels of an active disaster just got in the way of relief efforts and made it look like she was pandering for a photo op.