The Barsoom Project

Chapter Ten

Pins of fire leavened the darkness. That one, much brighter than the rest, had to be the sun. There was little else to catch the eye.. but here was a tiny twinkling point; there, another; there, a tumbling snowball marked with black fissures. Alex Griffin’s video wall was open to the realm of the protocomets.

Weird skirling music floated in and out, low in the background. A tiny voice spoke of billions of iceballs a few kilometers in diameter, spaced as far apart as Earth and sun, growing sparser yet as the sun dwindled aft. Compared to the inner solar system, the Oort Cloud was nearly as empty as interstellar space.

The view zoomed in on a world banded in black and dull reds, nested in a wide ring: Nemesis, a giant planet in a wide eccentric orbit, whose mass periodically hurled flurries of comets into the inner solar system. Nemesis was impure fiction. There was reason to think there might be a Nemesis, a world too distant to have been found by probes or telescopes.

The Oort Cloud presentation must have been infinitely more impressive in Gaming A this morning. Even so, the illusion was so deep and complete that Alex felt as if he and Millicent were sitting sideways above a pit. It surely had Millicent’s attention. Her hands moved like independent entities, bringing lobster to her mouth while comets buzzed her in the video wall.

He enjoyed watching her like that, in profile. He saw African and Spanish and English in her features, a recipe that brewed an almost irresistible meld of earthiness and intelligence. She was just what he needed to salve the day’s frustrations. But even if the doctor had prescribed her, the nurse still had to agree to the treatment…

Words from the screen caught his attention. “-probes will be driven by solar sails, powered by tremendous lasers stationed on Earth’s moon-”

“That bothered me,” he said.

Millicent looked at him. “Why?”

“I eavesdropped on our guests. They weren’t saying anything, but I saw their faces. Some of the Arabs and Brazilians, they don’t care about the comets or Mars. They want those terrawatt lasers. If a terror-monger could get control of one of those, he could fry Tehran or Sao Paulo before Earth could launch a ship.”

“Not your department,” Millicent said. “Anyway, I can’t picture a terror-monger with enough schooling to run one.”

“Don’t kid yourself. A lot of them are sending their kids off to college. MIT. Cambridge. Intelligence and fanaticism live in two overlapping worlds. Life isn’t a sliding scale, where you have single-minded fanatics on one end, and intelligent people on the other. Some of us can be very single-minded about things which are purely emotional…”

She said, “We’ve been moving asteroids for thirty years, and no one’s heaved one at us yet.”

“No. Thirty years, right? Sixteen asteroids, and three more on their way with Falling Angel crews? That’s not many. One asteroid strike can ruin your whole day.”

“Brrr. You’re rather grim tonight, aren’t you?”

Definitely the wrong mood. He reached across the table to squeeze her wrist; which took some care, because she was holding a forkful of scalloped potatoes. “Sorry. All work and no play makes Jack et cetera.”

Millicent smiled. “No play at all? That’s my Alex.”

“If I don’t invite the occasional young, beautiful account executive to my humble abode, I’d never find surcease of sorrow.” He put on his sincerest expression. “One of the burdens of power is that Communications can beep me twenty-five hours a day. One of the advantages of a loyal staff is that they’ve promised me the night off, if it’s humanly possible.”

She sipped at her wine, peering at him over the edge of the glass. Her eyes were alight with mischief. “We can hope, can’t we?”

Does that mean yes? He interpreted it as a good strong “maybe” and decided to back off, soft-pedal, and make another approach in a minute or two.

Millicent sensed the mood change, flowed with it. She cracked open a lobster claw with sudden force. “How’s Marty doing?”

“He’s keeping up. He looks like the point man in a Zimbabwe expedition. They’ve got him carrying a flintlock, for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh, Alex… sometimes it’s so easy for me to get lost in the accounts and the computers that… I guess I just miss Security. A lot more craziness.”

“Yeah… but you have a lot more talent than we could hold back. I’m glad you made it out.”

She sighed. “And Marty’s still playing games.”

“That’s Marty.”

“Well. I’m glad you recommended me.”

“It would have been criminal not to.” He found himself feeling slightly warmish. She lowered her eyes, and began pushing potatoes around the plate, doodling her fork with great intensity. Which smile was that blossoming…?

“Ah, Alex..