Ishtar Rising Book 1 - Michael A. Martin [24]
1011 and 1110, looking through Soloman as though he weren’t even present, exchanged nods with Paulos and one of the other human technicians.
Soloman swallowed. The moment of truth was fast arriving.
Paulos punched a key on her console and leaned forward. “Paulos to Ishtar Station. Vesper reports ready as well. All other stations showing green for go.”
“Saadya here. Everything looks good from up here.”
Soloman felt his pulse beginning to race, and his rate of breathing increasing. This was no simulation.
Then he noticed 1011 and 1110 watching him with narrowed eyes.
“Try to—”
“—keep up—”
“—with the dataflow—
“—singleton.”
Say nothing to them, Soloman thought, trying to ignore the slur.
His jaw tightened as he returned his attention to the ranks of marching figures. So far, nothing in the sensor readings appeared to necessitate making any new adjustments to the force-field network parameters. Field strengths were holding, and remained in balance. All was proceeding as planned, and the numbers attested to it.
The behavior of numbers, unlike that of flesh-and-blood beings, had the virtue of being understandable, logical, and predictable. But the figures were moving so very quickly. Nearly as fast as the dataflow to which he and 111 had been long accustomed…
Concentrate on the numbers. Nothing exists except for the numbers.
Saadya’s voice came over the speakers again, via a somewhat atmosphere-distorted signal. “I wish I could be down there with you, Team Ishtar.”
“We’ve been over this a million times, Pas. You’ve got to delegate. And who better to get a God’s eye view of things than you?”
“All right, Adrienne,” Saadya said, still sounding wistful. “I promise to stay up on Ishtar Station and just watch. Now go ahead and raise the roof.”
Soloman saw from his readouts that the so-called “roof-raising” was already well begun. He stared into his terminal, whose edges soon grew indistinct and vanished altogether, leaving nothing in his sight but the figures that expressed the shape, ebb, flow, and strength of the force-field network that strained and flexed in its effort to cage the broiling Venusian sky.
Wading alone into the rapid information torrent, Soloman exulted wordlessly in his ability to let the numbers occupy all of his concentration. He no longer had time to consider his outcast status, nor to ponder the enormity of what he and Team Ishtar were undertaking as they guided the bulk of the Venusian atmosphere away from the planet’s surface and toward the endless gulf of space.
But somewhere deep within him burned the persistent hope that these understandable, logical, predictable numbers would take no unexpected turns into chaos.
* * *
Pascal Saadya stood in his office, having had far too many cups of coffee to remain in his padded chair for very long. He leaned against the transparent aluminum window, watching the stately yellow world that turned below him.
“The force fields are networking nicely,” said Adrienne, her voice crackling with static no doubt exacerbated by the increasingly complex interplay among Project Ishtar’s artificial energy fields, atmospheric probes, and the planet’s high-pressure, acid-laden air. “We’re detecting no node failures, power surges, or significant deviations. And the probe network shows the atmosphere behaving exactly as the models predicted.”
So far. Saadya stood in silence, his mouth forming a grim slash as he stared down at Venus. After having worked so long and hard planning for this day, he could scarcely allow himself to taste of his triumph now that it had finally arrived.
Then he saw it. The first tangible, undeniable sign of his success. Venus, a world that had been utterly changeless for hundreds of millions of years, now appeared to be…
…bulging.
Saadya grinned, elated. It really is working!
* * *
With most of the da Vinci’s senior staff present, the small bridge seemed crowded enough to make David Gold reminisce about his youth. He recalled