The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [138]
“You will not get away with that,” Sonja told him. “You will not be allowed to do that.”
“Probably not, Sonja dear, but it certainly seems worth a try.”
“It is a direct threat to Chinese national interests if you board that facility. The state will not stand for that foreign intrusion.”
“I can certainly understand that nationalist point of view,” said Montalban. “I’m sure that the Chinese are scrambling for new launch capacity in Jiuquan right now. However, China is not the whole Earth. My family and my various political allies, to our great good luck, happen to be planning an international, orbital summit of Acquis and Dispensation political pundits. In fact, we had to postpone that summit when we heard there was bad solar weather. Our private space station, LilyPad—which does not have any mysterious weapons of mass extermination aboard it—happens to be in a rather remote orbit. Whereas the Chinese station—which has long been rumored to carry horrific weapons of mass destruction that can scramble the DNA of people on the ground through God only knows what horrible mechanism—that abandoned hulk, full of corpses and former war criminals, it orbits so close to the Earth that, if we don’t put a new crew aboard it immediately, it’s going to tumble out of orbit and possibly land on a major city.”
“That is completely untrue. That is a pack of lies. There is no danger of that happening. You made all that up. It’s all a snare and a political diversion. You are a pirate, you are stealing it.”
“Ah, but you forget that huge solar flare, Sonja. Solar flares heat the Earth’s outer atmosphere. That has increased the orbital drag on the space station. So of course the space station is a public hazard and it must be rescued at once. We are not pirates, but the responsible parties. The whole world will agree with us.”
“That’s a lie, too.”
“It’s not a lie. It’s the ‘precautionary principle.’ We can’t be sure that isn’t really happening. Maybe there’s a strange interaction with the solar magnetism and the particles of Chinese hydrogen bombs in our upper atmosphere. Maybe that’s what caused all these blackouts and the mayhem around the world. Do you think the world has any time to waste while the Chinese bureaucracy pulls its firecrackers out of mothballs to fly up there and do its sorry cover-up?”
Lionel was laughing wildly. “Just listen to that! Listen to him go! When he gets all wound up, there’s just nobody who can touch him! Wow! He’s had less than forty-eight hours to advance this political line! And he didn’t do it with his friends and his servants handy, either! He did it in the middle of a savage desert. Call me a fanboy, but … well, the stupid cute ones run for public office, and the smart ones manage the campaigns.”
“We’re shooting the works here, Lionel. We have to give it our best,” said Montalban.
Lionel nodded. “Absolutely, brother!”
After Montalban’s raging burst of oratory, nothing whatever happened. There was nothing around them. They were nowhere and in noware. Night was falling. There was utter emptiness.
“I’m thirsty,” Biserka moaned.
Lionel tipped water into her mouth. She sipped it and passed out.
“How will you know if your scheme has worked?” said Sonja.
“I can tell you,” Montalban confessed, “that I haven’t the least idea. There simply wasn’t any time to arrange for that. I threw the gears into motion—in network nodes all over this planet—I don’t even know who is first onto the space station. They’re not exactly two-fisted astronaut hero types, these Relinquishment intellectuals. Plus, there’s some likelihood that another solar flare will erupt and they all get fried up there. But—some global pundit is absolutely sure to