“An auxiliary pump, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You need it, sir. With all the burdens of work and the pressures you face every day, it’s a miracle that your heart has lasted this long without assistance.”
Carnaby huffed again to make sure that they understood that he didn’t like the idea. But then he lowered his head and said humbly, “God’s will be done.”
The aides scampered out of his office, delighted that he had acquiesced, and more than a little awed at the archbishop’s willingness to sacrifice his obvious distaste of medical procedures for the good of the Movement.
Alone at his desk, Carnaby called up the latest computer figures on church attendance. The New Morality was officially a nonsectarian organization. The bar graph that sprang up on his smart wall screen showed attendance reports for nearly every denomination in North and South America. The numbers were down—not by much, but the trend was clear. Even the Catholics were falling away from God.
His desktop intercom chimed. “Deacon Gillette calling, Archbishop,” said the phone’s angel-sweet voice. “Urgent.”
“Urgent? What’s so urgent?”
The phone remained silent for a moment, then repeated, “Deacon Gillette calling—”
“All right,” Carnaby interrupted the synthesized voice, irked at its limited abilities. “Put him through.”
Gillette’s face replaced the attendance statistics. He was an African-American, his skin so dark it seemed to shine as if he were perspiring. His deepset brown eyes always looked wary, as if he expected some enemy to spring upon him.
“Deacon,” said Carnaby, by way of greeting.
“Archbishop. I’ve received a disturbing report from our man in Ecuador.”
“We have a man in Ecuador?”
“At the skytower project, sir,” said Gillette.
“Ah, yes. A disturbing report, you say?”
“According to Rev. Danvers, the scientists of the skytower project are using a form of nanotechnology to build their structure.”
“Nanotechnololgy!” Carnaby felt a pang of alarm. “Nanomachines are outlawed, even in South America.”
Gillette closed his heavy-lidded eyes briefly, then explained, “They are not using nanomachines, exactly. Instead, they have developed genetically engineered viruses to work as nanomachines would, assembling the structural components of their tower.”
Carnaby felt the cords at the back of his neck tense and knew he would soon be suffering a headache.
“Tell Danvers to notify the authorities down there.”
“What they’re doing is not illegal, Archbishop. They’re using natural creatures, not artificial machines.”
“But you said these creatures have been genetically engineered, didn’t you?”
“Genetic engineering is not outlawed, sir,” Gillette replied, then quickly added, “Unfortunately.”
Carnaby sucked in a breath. “Then what can we do about it?”
With a sad shake of his head, Gillette answered, “I don’t know, sir. I was hoping that you would think of a solution.”
Fumbling for the oxygen mask in the compartment built into the wheelchair’s side, Carnaby groused, “All right, let me think about it.” He abruptly cut the phone connection and his wall returned to its underlying restful shade of pastel blue.
Carnaby held the plastic mask over his face for several silent moments. The flow of cool oxygen eased the tension that was racking his body.
Sudden thunder shook the building, startling Carnaby so badly that he dropped his oxygen mask. Then he realized it was another of those damnable rockets taking off from the old Hartsfield Airport.
He spun his chair to the window once again and craned his dewlapped neck, but there was nothing to see. No trail of smoke. No pillar of fire. The rockets used some kind of clean fuel: hydrogen, he’d been told. Doesn’t hurt the environment.
He slumped back in his wheelchair, feeling old and tired. I’ve spent my life trying to save their souls. I’ve rescued them from sin and the palpable wrath of God. And what do they do as soon as things begin to go smoothly again? They complain about our strict laws. They want more freedom, more license to grow fat and prosperous and sinful.
Then he looked out at the empty sky again. They’re getting richer because those rockets are bringing in metals and stuff from the asteroids. And they’ve built those infernal solar satellites up in orbit to beam electrical power to the ground.
Those space people. Scientists and engineers. Godless secularists, all of ’em. Poking around on other worlds. Claiming they’ve found living creatures. Contradicting Genesis every chance they get.
And now, Carnaby thought, those space people are building a high-tech Tower of Babel. They’re going to make it
They’re building their blasphemous tower in South America someplace, right in the middle of all those Catholics.
They’ve got to be stopped, Carnaby told himself, clenching his blue-veined hands into bony fists. But how? How?
RIDING THE ELEVATOR
“How high are we?” Lara asked, her eyes wide with excitement.
Bracknell glanced at the readout screen set next to the elevator’s double doors, where Victor Molina was standing. “Eighty-two kilometers, no, now it’s eighty-three.”
“I don’t feel anything,” she said. “No sense of motion at all.”
For nearly a month Bracknell had resisted Lara’s pleas for a ride in the space elevator. The instant he had told her the first elevator tube had completed all its tests and was officially operational, she had begged him for a ride. Bracknell had temporized, delayed, tried to put her off. To his surprise, he found that he was worried about the elevator’s safety. All these years I’ve drafted the plans, laid out the schematics, overseen the construction, he castigated himself, and when we get right down to it, I don’t trust my own work. Not with Lara’s life. I’m afraid to let her ride the elevator.
That realization stunned him. All the number crunching, all the tests, and I don’t trust my own work. I’m willing to let others ride the elevator, I’m even willing to ride it myself, but when it comes to Lara—I’m afraid. Superstition, pure and simple, he told himself. Yet he found excuses to keep her from his skytower.
The elevator worked fine, day after day, week after week, hauling technicians and cargo up to the stations at the various levels of the tower. Bracknell’s confidence in the system grew, and Lara’s importunings did not abate. If anything, she became even more insistent.
“You’ve been up and down a dozen times,” she whispered to him as they lay together in the shadows of their darkened bedroom, her head on his naked chest. “It’s not fair for you to keep me from going with you. Just once, at least.”
Despite his inner tension, he grinned in the darkness. “It’s not fair? You’re starting to sound like a kid arguing with his parents.”
“Was I whining?” she asked.
“No,” he had to admit. “I’ve never heard you whine.”
She lay silent for several moments. He could feel her breathing slowly, rhythmically, as she lay against him.
“Okay,” he heard himself say. “We’ll go up to the LEO deck,” he conceded.
Lara knew the Low Earth Orbit station was five hundred kilometers up. Her elation was immediately tinged with disappointment.
