04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (16 page)

They were a curious mixture; Arabic-looking men with clipped accents and business suits who had made deserts bloom. East Indian agricultural experts always fighting starvation and fighting a depleted land, and Ibo craftsmen who could handle too much water on the crops. There were urban planners there, too, from places like Accra and Buenos Aires, and from small towns and villages carved out of the most unlikely geographies.

All were amazed and a little awed at the idea that this man
thought
geology, climatology, and all the other factors big and small into existence just the way he wanted them. She'd paraded so many through now that he'd developed a stock speech of sorts.

"Computers don't know what the real world is like," he told them. "They never really have. They go by what we tell them. For centuries we've been able to go into a computer and graphically create a convincing, animated, three-dimensional picture of any world we want, obeying any laws we wish. That was child's play, but it's basic to understanding what we're doing, and for a very long time that's all we
could
do. It was handy, and sophisticated, for solving all sorts of scientific theory, planning cities and seeing the implication of drainage, irrigation, climate shifts—whatever. Only with the discovery and taming of Flux, however, were we able to take it further, building computers with enormous memory capacity and giving them all the power they needed.

"In a sense, what I do is the same as creating those pictures. We feed in the basics that we must live with—the stability equations to keep our world warm enough and maintain a workable, if static, atmosphere that can sustain us and provide the energy to run our computer network, power network, transport network, and the like—and to self-repair, since even with redundancies built in, we can't afford failures of any sort here.

"The end objective is to create a world that we can thrive on that is in every way self-sustaining. That means sufficient plant-to-animal ratios to allow us to have our own permanent natural atmospheric processes. We'll need water, and a climatological system that delivers enough to every place we need it. To maintain our ecosystem we'll need to create surface soil with exact mineral balances to assure good plant growth and human and animal health. Requirements like these are fed to the computer as 'givens'—accept, can't touch. From that point I start playing with the exact form this world should be. Yes?"

"I have used such models all the time in the Punjab," said someone in the group. "How is this so different?"

"It's not, except that we create the picture—the
appearance
of reality—only to keep checking our mistakes and seeing our problems before we have to live with them. Unlike anyplace on Earth, or even Titan, we aren't troubled with an existing global ecosystem yet, so we can design our own. We aren't hobbled by existing soil, climate, and moisture conditions, or problems of elevation. We can add or subtract to any of these and hundreds more factors and come up with what we
wish
we had. Once that model is built and saved in the computer, we can take it one step further. We can draw energy from Flux through the grid and use it to turn energy into matter and other, more useful forms of energy. We can take that theoretical computer model and we can order it to come off the viewing device and become reality."

"I've seen many a nightmare landscape on the view boxes as well, sir," remarked an Argentine who was in command of, but obviously still new to, conversational English, the majority language and by default the common one for the project and the world. "Can you not also create nightmares with this thing? Real nightmares people must live with, and even in?"

"The possibility's there," he admitted, "but that's why we have bosses and cross-checks. Everything I design goes through not only my computers but many of my colleagues' as well, and is examined, picked apart, and critiqued worse than a bad novel. It's an ego-deflating experience, after months of work, to send out a model you have checked and double-checked and lived with like one of your own children and see it hacked to pieces by your associates. Consensus, both of the engineers and their computers, is required before we put anything into practice."

"Will it be a gray, barren, soulless place like this?" one woman asked him, sounding very concerned. "I admit this is not the vision that sold me on committing myself to this project."

At the start, it probably will be worse than this," he responded honestly. "But once we're in, have set up our equipment, and tested everything to the hilt, then run
new
models, some from scratch, and reconciled those with the other departments, we'll begin to shape the place. First there'll be the computer center and a rather primitive sort of city around it—primitive at first anyway. Then we'll start developing the region around in a careful manner. These will be experiments—scale models of what we propose to do to the whole planet—and we may make some mistakes we'll have to live with, but if I'm good enough, they won't be in
my
area. The objective is to create four different prototypes around each of the seven Gates and compare notes. Each of them will be self-sufficient in the basics—food, clothing, shelter. When done, they will be almost like little worldlets of their own. These are the Anchor blocks, as we call them—the experimental areas and templates for what will come after.''

"Will there be grayness? I know there's no sun," someone asked.

"New Eden is a moon about the size of Titan in an outer orbit around a gas giant almost the size of Jupiter," he told them. "Gas giants have often been described, with some justification, as stars that failed. We will get no heat from our mother world, but we will get a great deal of light. It's a different sort of light, because it is almost all reflective and it literally will dominate the daytime sky—perhaps three quarters of the sky at midday—and because, like our own gas giants, it's banded. We feel that the fact that it's a bit odd and different is not sufficient to not use it as our primary light source. We have to anyway—anything that big, that close, and that bright is going to light up even dense Flux down to the ground in any event.

"The atmosphere currently is static and artificial, and is designed as a protection against radiation and who knows what else that might come down. We've learned a lot from this station here on Titan, including the need to protect ourselves from some things we never before knew existed. Once the Anchors are in enough for us to sit back, live off them, and see how well they work, we'll clear the air, so to speak, within their boundaries. The sky will be nearly as transparent as Earth's—and as distorting. An artificial miniature climate will be induced to feed us rainfall and we'll see how everything works, from drainage to irrigation to drinking and sewage. To you, you will be living in a self-contained and quite pleasant but very tiny world of your own—each Anchor will be. In effect, you'll be living within a fixed and very real computer simulation. The Anchors will be the best places, by the way, because they're easy—they're being designed as ideals, and because of their relatively small areas we don't have to worry about interaction with the rest of the world. It's only when we start filling in from Anchor to Anchor and Anchor to Gate that we will get incredibly complex."

"Will there be oceans when the world is done?" another asked.

"No. We're dealing in a smaller area than Earth and we have the luxury of being able to distribute our water more evenly. However, there will be some huge lakes—not in the Anchors though—that will look like and serve the functions of oceans, and a tremendous river system. We plan for the great mass of water to be frozen in the polar regions, as on Earth—only on
our
world, by simply sending current up that grid and converting it to heat, we'll be able to melt what's needed and channel it north and south to the life zones when and where needed. Large bodies of water are, however, my specialty, and so far the problem hasn't been totally solved. It's possible I may have to add an ocean after all at some point, for climatological reasons, but we're trying to avoid it if we can, as well as tall mountain ranges. These factors more than anything else can make one place too dry and another too wet. We intend a water area equivalent to two large oceans, but it will be broken up and put where
we
want and need them."

"What's the problem with your big lakes?"

"Mostly it's tides. We're dealing here with a moon, not a planet, and we're subject to solar tides, the effects of other planets, and, most of all, the effects of being so bloody close to a gigantic world. If Earth's moon can create the tides
it
does, imagine the tides a Jupiter can cause. Add in other moons—we have two dozen of any significance in our lunar system—and various rings, and you've got a hellish mess. When we solve that one, we'll be on our way."

"Looking at this project, some of us can't help but question if it is all worth it," said one woman, and there were several nods. "My own people are hungry each day."

"That's why we must not fail," he responded. "We are the guinea pigs for what's going on back home. We've never minimized the risk, although we've accented the adventure. We can't feed, clothe, or house all the people we've got on Earth. We're running low on resources and not all of them can be replaced economically or even practically from space. If we can survive, build, grow, and prove ourselves out, it will be child's play to remake the Earth, renew and replenish it. If we can do it out there, we can also do it to Mars, the moon, perhaps even to Venus, to other outer moons, and wherever we need it, and we can build worlds where there is no hunger, no lack of material goods. That's the object here, and we must remember it always.

"That's why so much in resources is being poured into this project. That's why we can't afford to fail. It's our task to save the human race. We dare not fail—or the conditions on Earth today, bad as they are, are only a pale shadow of what is to come."

There were more—hundreds more—such questions, and he fielded them expertly. Too expertly, he worried. He couldn't help but wonder if they were leaving him here to do this simply because he was so good at it.

But finally he got the call, and to Sir Kenneth's office. The handsome, gentle-seeming Kenyan still had his doubts about things, but he was doing a good job and couldn't help but feel some of the excitement and thrill of embarking on what might well be humanity's greatest adventure.

"Come in, lad! Have a seat," the Director of Landscape Engineering said cheerfully, although it was clear that he was very tired. Korda had aged five years in the past six months. "I hear you're making an excellent propagandist for us."

"I suppose," he grumbled. "It's not exactly my line though." Not very subtle, but he felt he didn't have much he could lose.

"I know, I know," Korda responded sympathetically. "You're eager to get out there. Well, your time has come."

He felt a sudden knot in his stomach, and rising excitement, but he held it in and just looked expectantly at his boss.

"There are pluses and minuses to your assignment." Sir Kenneth continued, "so I want to go into them and our reasoning with you now. First of all, you're assigned to Sector Four, under your countrywoman, Sandra Kingsley."

That
was good news. He didn't know her very well, but those who worked under her had nothing but good things to say. "Yes, sir?"

"Area Four doesn't have a division headquarters—the only one that doesn't—and that's probably all to the good. It's the one region where our people will be stepping on the fewest toes and tripping over the least bureaucracy. That also means, however, an area not near the centers of power and influence, so if anything runs short, it'll short you first and you'll get replacements last."

"I'm not exactly unfamiliar with coping with things like that," Haller noted ruefully. Water projects had not been very high on Westrex's initial list on Titan.

"I know. That's one reason you're right for down there. You have a good record of making do with what you have and scrounging up what you need without bothering with channels. There are, however, some additional negatives to Four, which is, as you might guess, the last to be fully set up."

Haller nodded. "Go ahead, sir."

"First of all, they—the board—are dropping some small teams of folks working on special projects into there simply because they want them secret and out of the way. They might assist, they might not—and they might also ease you out when you need the machine, for example. They are answerable only to the board—not even Kingsley will know what they're doing, and she'll have no authority to cancel their priority. They'll have van Haas's ear, in other words. They will probably be a pain in the ass, but they will be experts on the big machines, and the little ones, and don't hesitate to use them if you can. Understand?''

He nodded, understanding perfectly. Not only their brains but also their supplies and their priority slips.

"All right. Finally, while you'll be getting some good people there, particularly at the start, they're also using Region Four as something of a dumping ground. Odd religious sects, important people nobody really wants, political prisoners—all that. Lots of variety, to say the least."

"To say the least," Haller repeated a little sarcastically. A bundle of foreign religious nuts and folks sent out there against their will. Plus all the missionary groups, political groups with some leverage, you name it. It would be messy— but certainly not boring.

"Now, the good news for last. You and I both know it's going to take years just to establish and test out the Anchors. We don't know how many years, but perhaps as much as a decade or even longer. A great deal of Region Four is devoted in the master plan to one of your great lakes, so that's the final reason for going down there, but you and I know that I can't keep you on big water projects forever when any results are perhaps decades away."

He nodded. "I understand, sir." Having such a time frame spelled out was not a happy thing, although it was nothing he hadn't known from the start.