Firstborn

“You aren’t sleeping well, are you, love?”

“Mum, I know we can’t talk about this right now. But I got my subpoenas yesterday. For your hearing and my own.”

Bella sighed. She had fought to keep Edna from having to face a tribunal. “We’ll get through it.”

“You mustn’t think you need to protect me,” Edna said, a bit stiffly. “I did my duty, Mum. I’d do the same again, if ordered.

When I get my day in court I’ll tell the truth.” She forced a smile.

“Anyway the hell with it all. Thea’s longing to see you. We’ve made camp, a bit away from the marquees and the bars…”

Edna had colonized an area of the VAB roof close to the edge.

It was perfectly safe, blocked in by a tall, inward-curving wall of glass. Edna had spread out picnic blankets and fold-out tables and chairs, and had opened up a couple of hampers. Cassie Duflot was already here, with her two kids, Toby and Candida. They were playing with Thea, Edna’s daughter, Bella’s four-year-old granddaughter.

In this corner of the VAB roof it was Christmas, Bella saw to her surprise. The kids, playing with toys, were surrounded by wrapping paper and ribbons. There was even a little pine tree in a pot. An older man in a Santa suit sat with them, a bit awkwardly, but with a grin plastered over his tired face.

Thea came running. “Grannie!”

“Hello, Thea.” Bella submitted to having her knees hugged, and then she bent down and cuddled her granddaughter properly. The other kids ran to her too, perhaps vaguely remembering the nice old lady who had come with a memento to their father’s funeral. But the kids soon broke away and went back to their presents.

Santa Claus shook Bella’s hand. “John Metternes, Madam Chair,” he said. “I flew with your daughter on the Liberator. ”

“Yes, of course. I’m very glad to meet you, John. You did good work up there.”

He grunted. “Let’s hope the judge agrees. Look, I hope you don’t think I’m butting in — I can see there’s a family thing going on here—”

“I forced him down for some shore leave,” Edna said, a bit acidly. “This weird old obsessive would sleep on the Liberator if the maintenance crew would let him.”

“Don’t let her bug you, John. It’s good of you to do this. But —

Christmas, Edna? It’s only the fifteenth of December.”

“Actually it was my idea.” Cassie Duflot approached Bella. “It was just that, you know, we still aren’t sure how today is going to turn out, are we?” She glanced at the sky, as if seeking the Q-bomb.

“I mean, not really sure. And if things were to go wrong, badly wrong—”

“You wanted to give the kids their Christmas anyway.”

“Do you think that’s odd?”

“No.” Bella smiled. “I understand, Cassie.”

“It does make it a hell of a day,” Edna said. “And what’s worse, if the world doesn’t get blown up today, we’ll have to do it all again in ten days’ time.”

“You attracted quite a crowd for your launch, Bella,” Cassie said.

“Looks like it—”

“Mum, you haven’t seen the half of it yet,” Edna said. She took her mother’s arm again and walked her toward the glass-walled lip of the building.

At the roof edge Bella was able to see the ocean to the east, where the low sun hung like a lamp, and the coast to north and south, her view stretching for kilometers in either direction.

Canaveral was crowded. The cars clustered along the shoreline, and were parked up as far as the Beach Road to the north, and to the south on Merritt Island and the Cape itself, carpeting the old industrial facilities and the abandoned Air Force base. Everywhere, flags fluttered in the strong breeze.

And out at sea she saw the gray, blocky form of a reused oil rig.

Rising from it was a double thread, dead straight, visible when it caught the light.

“They came for the switch-on,” Edna said. “You always were a showman, Mum. Maybe politicians have to be. And reopening America’s elevator today is a good stunt. People feel like a party, I guess.”

“Oh, it’s more than just another space elevator. You’ll see.”

“New ways forward, Mum?”

“I’ve just come down from a conference with Bob Paxton and others on new deep-defense concepts. Big concepts. Terraforming programs, for instance.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Just thinking big. That’s what cutting your teeth on the shield does for you, I guess. And I must talk to Myra Dutt sometime.” She glanced at the sky. “We have to do something about Mir — this other place Myra’s mother went to. They’re humans in there too. If we can speak to them, as Alexei Carel claims they have been able to on Mars, surely we can find a way to bring them home…”

There was a stir. Bella was aware of people approaching her, hundreds of eyes on her on this roof alone, and that cam robot whirled and glistened at her feet, puppylike. Even those monks by the alligator pond were staring at her, grinning from ear to ear.

She looked at her watch. “I think it’s time.”

“Mum, you’re going to have to say something.”

“I know. Just a minute more.” She looked out to sea, to the shining vertical track of the elevator. “Edna, call the kids so they can see.”

The children came to join them, clutching their presents, with Cassie and John Metternes, who hoisted Thea up onto his shoulders.

A flare went up from that oil rig, a pink spark arcing and trailing smoke. Then there was motion along the track of the elevator, shining droplets rising up one of the pair of threads. A ragged cheer broke out around them, soon echoed among the wider throngs scattered across Canaveral.

“It’s working,” Bella breathed.

“But what’s it carrying?” Edna murmured, squinting. “Magnify… Damn, I keep forgetting I’m in EVA.”

“Water,” Bella said. “Sacks of seawater. It’s a bucket chain, love.

The pods will be lifted to the top of the tower, and thrown off.”

“Thrown where?”

“The Moon, initially. Later Venus.”

Edna stared at the elevator stack. “So where’s the power coming from? I don’t see any laser mounts on that rig.”

“There aren’t any. There is no power source — nothing but the Earth’s rotation. Edna, this isn’t really an elevator. It’s a siphon.”

Edna’s eyes lit up with wonder.

The orbital siphon was an extension of the space-elevator concept that derived from the elevator’s peculiar mechanics. Beyond the point of geosynchronous orbit, centripetal forces tended to throw masses away from the Earth. The trick with the siphon was to harness this tendency, to allow payloads to escape but in the process to draw more masses up from Earth’s surface. Essentially, the energy of Earth’s rotation was being transferred to an escaping stream of payload pellets.

“So you don’t need any external energy input at all,” Edna said.

“I studied this concept at USNGS. The big problem was always thought to be keeping the damn thing fed — you’d need a fleet of trucks working day and night to maintain the payload flow. But if all you’re throwing up there is seawater—”

“We call it Bimini,” Bella said. “It’s appropriate enough. The native Americans told Ponce de Leon about a fountain of youth on an island called Bimini. He never found it, but he stumbled on Florida…”

“A fountain of youth?”

“A fountain of Earth’s water to make worlds young again. The Moon first, then Venus. Look, Edna, I wanted this as a demonstration to the Spacers that we’re serious. It will still take centuries, but with resource outputs like this, terraforming becomes a practical possibility for the first time. And if Earth lowers its oceans just a fraction and slows its rotation an invisible amount to turn the other worlds blue again, I think that’s a