Close Up the Sky (48 page)

"Would you
mind if we put it off until later?" Matt asked. "I need some
air." He and Taylor both stood up. "Will you join us, sir?" He
said to Durant.

The old man nodded
and got up.

"Please
excuse us, gentlemen," Matt said to the others. "I'm sure we still
have some more talking to do."

"Take your
time, Lieutenant," Ritchie said. "We won't be leaving until late
tomorrow.”

The three of them
walked out onto the deck and leaned against the rail. The sun was just above
the western horizon. In two hours it would be night. Lloyd's Perch rose up in
front of them like a huge inverted funnel. Durant lit his pipe and blew a cloud
of smoke into the warm air.

"Hope you two
don't mind," he said, indicating the pipe. "I can't tell you how
happy I am that you're safe."

Taylor kissed him
on the cheek. "You know you've got to get some rest," she said. "We
don't want to lose you either."

“May I ask you
something?” Matt asked the old man.

“Anything.”

"How do you
keep an operation of this magnitude secret, and how much oil have we removed
from this region, and where are we putting it?"

Durant gazed out
over the azure water for a moment before he answered. "As far as secrecy
is concerned, with the exception of a few navy officers and managers, none of
the workers or sailors
know
where they are. The oil
tanks themselves are not near the actual fields, so the oilmen don't see
anything when the transports take place. I don't know the exact amount we've
moved, but I'm sure the figure is in the billions of barrels. And where are we
putting it? There are hundreds of miles of dry caverns all over America, and
many more throughout the western world. Here, in this time period, we have an
untold number of pumps working around the clock at stations located throughout
the region. The local stations pump the oil out of the ground as fast as they can,
and pipe it overland to large tanks. The tanks are equipped with direct-link Chronocom
pagers, and as they are filled the oil is automatically sealed in magnetic
envelopes and transported to receiving stations in prehistoric America. It’s
then pumped into pressurized holding locations. It's been a nonstop
operation."

Matt waved his arm
across the other ships. “What about these ships? Are they rotated in and out? How
do you manage to conceal their disappearance from Russian tracking?”

"They stay on
station for a few months until their replacements arrive with additional
supplies and equipment. The warships protect the field operations and keep the
local population away. As to their disappearance, as you put it, we wait for a
good storm to brew up in the Pacific. In the case of two ships at a time, if we
know they’re being tracked the navy makes it look like they collide in the
storm and sink just at the instant the Chronocom transports them. If only a
single vessel is involved, she simply goes down in the storm. So far we’ve
gotten away with it. But it’s not just an American operation.
Stations just like this one are operated by our allies at other
locations throughout the region
. So you can see what we were facing when
our present supply of stellarite began to burn out. As I said before, thousands
of workers and military personnel would have been stranded here, not to mention
the strategic implications. Babylon Station has been underway since a few years
after the Iraq war, and we finally stressed it to the breaking point."

"Since the
Iraq war!" Matt sounded incredulous.

"Yes. Babylon
Station was conceived just after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In a way, the
invasion served as a long overdue wake-up call for America and her allies. It
was the first time that we truly realized the consequences of allowing another
country to control the oil we have become so dependent upon. That was the day
the president decided that we would no longer permit OPEC to hold such power
over us. Our young men and women will never again be required to die in order
to ensure the free flow of oil."

Matt shook his
head. “You know that we haven’t built a new refinery in America in more years
than I can remember. The few we have can’t possibly handle the demand without
foreign assistance. Even if we started now, it would be years before the first
one is completed.”

“A good point,”
Durant responded. “But plans for new refineries, pipelines, and storage
facilities have already been drawn. Construction is simply waiting for us to
finish with this operation. We also know that the oil won’t last forever even
if we include our own extensive untapped supplies. But Babylon Station has
given us the time we need to develop new energy sources and put oil behind us
once and for all.”

"Have you
considered the moral implications of it? I mean
,
Sureahl and Kasdan did what they did to protect their country, yet we call them
murderers. How much different are we from them?"

Durant thought on
that for a moment then said, "We all do what we think is right, Matt. But
America and the rest of the western world don’t deal in terrorism and death. Of
course we wage war, put criminals to death, and sometimes kill innocent people
who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We're always sorry for
that, and when it happens we punish ourselves much more than anyone else ever
would. We put our dirty laundry in the window for everyone to see, and we make
amends wherever possible. But we don't persecute our own people or those of
other nations. The free world depends on America to lead in human rights
issues, and we do a pretty good job of it. We don't always win, but we try. America
is far from perfect, but it's still the most amazing country in the world. Nowhere
on earth do people have the freedom that Americans enjoy. That's why so many of
them around the world are waiting to become one of us. America may be composed
of many nationalities, but we are
one
people. That’s where our ingenuity and our strength come from.”

“You make it all
sound so simple,” Taylor said. She reached out and took Matt’s hand.

"I know what
I’ve said sounds like a speech written for a politician,” Durant went on, “but
it's true. To make sure we stay strong, we just can't continue to allow
terrorist countries to control such a large part of the world's oil supply. Our
economy is so delicately balanced and so dependent on oil that the slightest
interruption affects the entire fabric of our country. There is no freedom
without oil; no guarantee that some dictator won't rise up and crush us if we
don't have the means to prevent it. We've seen it many times throughout history:
Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini,
Saddam
Hussein. They’ll
never stop coming, and we’ll never stop fighting them while we have the means
to do it. Like it or not, oil is the blood of freedom. But it can also be a
powerful weapon in the wrong hands. If some future dictator attempts to cut off
our oil supply, or manipulates prices to the point to where it threatens to
damage our economy, we'll be ready. We'll never again have to fear being held
hostage at the whim of some third world tyrant. We're free. But now the project
is coming to an end. It's time to close up the sky and go home."

"I hope
you're right," Matt said. “But I remember you saying that it’s impossible
to change history.”

“What makes you
think it’s been changed? Babylon Station
is
part of history, or we couldn’t have made it work in the first place. The
Middle East is still supplying oil to the rest of the world, and we’re still
buying it. The only difference is that we don’t have to deal with them if we
decide not to."

Taylor looked at
Matt and nodded. “Now I know what you meant back at Apache Point when you asked
me if something from the past could change the future without any outward sign
that anything had been changed.”

They were silent
for a while, just looking at the water and allowing the warm breeze to blow
over them. Right or wrong, the western world had taken steps to free itself
from potential economic disaster. Now, involvement in third world affairs would
only be in issues of human rights. With a touch of humor Matt thought that time
itself
would judge whether they were right or wrong.

Off in the
distance a speaker on one of the other ships echoed across the water announcing
crew mess in ten minutes.

"Are you hungry?"
Matt asked Taylor.

"I'd love to
have some cold chicken and a bottle of wine." She said it as though
speaking to a headwaiter.

He laughed. "I
think the chicken could probably be arranged, but I don't know about the wine. This
is a U.S. Navy ship, you know."

"I was just
wondering," she said. "Do you think the captain would let us stand a
night watch on the hill? We could take the food with us. We'll make our own
wine." The coy smile on her face made butterflies in his stomach.

"I'll ask
him."

“Don’t worry about
it you two,” Durant said, patting Taylor on the shoulder. “Whether you know it
or not, today you saved the lives of everyone in this fleet and a lot of others
to boot. If you had not found Edward and the stellarite he was carrying we’d
all be trapped here forever. I doubt there's anything you could ask for that
you couldn’t get. I'll go make the arrangements with Captain Lloyd myself. And
I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds a bottle somewhere. You just go get what
you need from your quarters. That sailor over there has been assigned to show
you the way.” He pointed to the seaman who had escorted them to the conference
room. “Meet me on the helicopter deck when you’re ready.”

They watched him
walk away and disappear through a hatch.

Matt turned to
Taylor and gazed into her eyes. "I love you, Taylor, without reservation. Now
and forever." The words he thought he would never say again came easily to
him.

Her smile returned
the words he had spoken, open and true. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed
him softly. "And I love you, too, Matt Leahy. I’ve waited a long time for
you to come into my life. I think I knew you were the one from the moment I
first saw you.”

Together they
watched the sun begin to sink into the western ocean, casting a magnificent
amber glow in the sky. It gave them both a secure feeling to know that within a
few hours that same sun would be rising on home, on America.

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