The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [0]
Bruce Sterling
CONTENTS
Title page
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Adcard
Copyright
ZENITH ANGLE:
a measured angle between the sky directly overhead and any object seen in the sky.
PROLOGUE
COLORADO, SEPTEMBER 1999
The Most Important Man in the World put his pants on one leg at a time. Then he put on his boots and his Stetson.
He checked the cabin’s rusty mirror. The Most Important Man in the World looked pretty good in his cowboy hat. His haunted burnt-out eyes, his white stubble, and his lined sunken cheeks . . . wearing a cowboy hat changed all those things. In his Stetson, Tom DeFanti looked downright weather-beaten. Rugged. Solid. He was a man of the earth.
The little cabin was stark, lonely, old, and simple. It lacked running water, wiring, and a toilet. It required this mountain cabin and the 16,812 acres of Pinecrest Ranch to free Tom DeFanti from his monuments. His cable franchises. His newspapers. His Web sites. His news magazine. His Internet fiber-optic backbone. His international charitable foundation. His monuments loomed over him like so many tombstones.
Then there were his other, less mentionable monuments. They orbited high overhead, watching the globe around the clock.
DeFanti carefully buttoned his thick flannel shirt. September light was fading in the small glass panes.
Though he had been raised like an ugly swan by a working-class Italian family, Thomas DeFanti had always wanted and expected to become a very important man. However, DeFanti had never expected to become as incredibly rich as he was in the autumn of 1999. His holdings had blown up like a mushroom cloud, due to the Internet boom. This brought new attention to DeFanti that he didn’t much like. It brought new expectations that he didn’t know how to fulfill. Life for the very rich was always strange, and often dangerous.
The man who had built this old Colorado cabin had also been a very rich man. DeFanti had studied him closely. He was grateful for the dead man’s useful lessons in how to get by.
The dead man had once been a very important Chicago banker. In 1911 he’d built the Colorado cabin, a tiny shelter for his astronomical observatory. The cabin was a quiet place, a safe place. The banker’s ghost still hung there under the close black rafters, in a vapor of horse sweat, brandy, and fine cigars. Just like Tom DeFanti, the dead man had slept in that narrow, no-nonsense iron bed, its frame as solid as a torture rack. There was no room in that bed for his fireball society wife. The dead man’s demanding rich kids were also three days away by a good long train ride. As for the dead man’s lawyers, accountants, vice presidents, and stockholders, they might as well be stuck up on the Moon.
Here in the mountains of Pinecrest, the world had to let a man live. Clear air, elk, forests, red granite, fine fishing, good shooting. And the telescope, of course. Telescopes justified everything, for both Tom DeFanti and his dear friend and mentor, the dead banker. Telescopes brought both of them perspective, and solace, and a true kind of happiness. Telescopes, long nights left alone, and those sweet, dark, endless skies.
The cabin’s stone hearth held a fragrant tang of pine ashes. In an old cedar chest, the dead banker had carefully hidden the sacred books of his boyhood. They were a boy’s turn-of-the-century reading, adventure stories about industry and engineering, bought for a nickel each from the newsstands of boomtown Chicago. Steam Man of the Plains by “NoName,” and about three dozen others. On overcast nights when the seeing was bad, DeFanti had read the flaking novelettes by lantern light. They were simple, good stories. Lots of manly action.
DeFanti removed the cowboy hat and splashed at his face from the tin bowl and white pitcher. He yanked open a rustic wooden drawer and thumbed through his private galaxy of pills. What would it be tonight? Prozac yes, aspirin