The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [123]
“When do you begin your so-called satellite attack?” said Mr. Liang’s interpreter. “Our phone line to Beijing is still working perfectly!”
“We are attacking that Iridium satellite,” said Tony. “Right now. There is no visible beam. It is a very energy-efficient process. The adaptive beam has to penetrate miles of atmosphere with as little signal loss as possible. We don’t even generate the laser pulses locally. We amplify them and collate them. We are beaming Internet traffic up into the sky, from the telescope, right now. Those Internet signals come from all over the planet.”
“Don’t the people miss their Internet when you throw it up into outer space?” said Sanjay.
“It’s all spam.”
“No.”
“Yes, I am attacking a satellite with laser spam.”
“No.”
“We are running a major Internet backbone across the Rocky Mountains here,” said Tony patiently. “We have spam filters. Nobody ever asks where the spam goes. We beam the spam into outer space.”
“You are an evil man,” said Sanjay simply. “I don’t like you. I never liked you.”
“Why are you selling this laser weapon to us?” demanded Mr. Gupta. “Why don’t you sell your weapon to the Americans? They are the ones obsessed with space violence.”
“Because India and China are the planet’s two emergent space powers,” said Tony passionately. “China is about to launch its first manned mission. China is only the third nation on this world that is able to launch men in space. And India has an unmanned moon rocket planned for 2008. You Indians, you Chinese, you need this space capability to diminish America’s overwhelming space power. The Americans don’t need laser weapons. Not at all! If the Americans want to attack your Indian and Chinese satellites, they can fly up with a Space Shuttle and bring them down whole in one piece.”
There was a long silence as the listeners consulted their satellite phones.
“It makes no sense for us to purchase American weapons on American soil for use against American satellites,” insisted the Chinese interpreter. “Your proposal is absurd. We do have some interest in the hardware and the technical plans. A very mild interest.”
“You don’t have any choice,” Tony shouted. He tried to calm himself. “Look at the geomilitary realities here. You are the two oldest civilizations in this world. You have a billion people each. But the Americans completely rule your air. The Americans have more advanced fighters and bombers than all other nations combined. The Americans completely rule your seas. The Americans have nine supercarrier battle groups and whole fleets of nuclear submarines. On land, the Americans have nine thousand Abrams tanks with the world’s most accurate fire-control systems. Nobody else even has the experience of the American armies—since 1985 the Americans have been the only military that still fights genuine wars. The Americans are taking over your planet by force of arms. And now, after one terrorist incident from some small cult of fanatics, the Americans feel completely justified in attacking anyone, anywhere, at any time! And with space dominance to leverage all those other military assets, the Americans can do that. The Americans can strike with total speed and accuracy on every square meter of this globe! If you don’t move into space warfare, your militaries will be completely irrelevant.”
“No space weapon will ever harm the many American submarines,” said Mr. Gupta wisely. “Nor would this one trifling weapon be of much use against the vast host of American satellites. However, I concur that this weapon has one important use. This weapon might be of great use in harming the Chinese space program. We Indians could rent this laser and attack Chinese photoreconnaissance assets. For instance, we could burn up the orbiting Tsinghua surveillance system, a considerable irritant in our Indian nuclear development efforts. May I ask my esteemed colleague Dr. Liang what he thinks of that prospect?”
Liang engaged in consultation with his interpreter and his telephone.