The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [4]
“So, what, they gave you the lunch tour? Take this hat back.”
“The name of DeFanti-san opens every door in astronomy! They loved me at Kamiokande. Keep the hat, Tom. The acolyte wears no hat when the Master lacks a hat.” The Dot-Commie tunneled into his plastic windbreaker. It featured a snug little drawstring hood. He yanked the hood over his big egg head and grinned winningly. He looked like a plastic elf.
“At Kamiokande, they’re underground and galactic at the same time!” the Dot-Commie crowed, dancing in place a little to shake off the cold. “About a billion photon tubes down there. They catch neutrinos inside giant tubs of water. The Japanese are underground, underwater, and observing the galaxy. All at the same time!”
“That scheme works out for them, does it?”
“They get major results!” The Dot-Commie dug into his magic black bag and retrieved his gleaming silver laptop. “So, which is bigger, DeFanti-sensei? The universe, or the screen that shows us the universe?”
“It’s all about the screens now, kid.”
“You bet, Ascended Master! You are beyond Zen!”
DeFanti chewed mournfully at his grizzled lower lip. “Quit bragging. It’s more of the same, that’s all. That LINEAR nonsense. And NEAT, and LONEOS, and SPACEWATCH. Shipping astronomy on Internet routers. Why in hell did I ever pay for those things?”
“They can search every pixel in the sky, Tom.”
DeFanti ignored him. “Nowadays, an amateur couldn’t spot a fresh comet to save his life! Those stupid scanning machines will always beat him to that. God damn it, I always wanted to bag my own comet. Always. ‘Comet DeFanti’!”
DeFanti put his twitching eyelid to the chilly rubber eyepiece of his Questar. He knew very well that the sky was being mapped with ruthless digital detail. That wasn’t the part that scared him. No, the scary part was what space telescopes had done to the Earth. Pinecrest Ranch was easily visible from space. Any passing cosmonaut could see the place with the naked eye. The National Reconnaissance Office, as a meaningful gesture to a favorite supplier, had sent DeFanti a digital map of his whole Colorado spread.
The NRO had given Pinecrest Ranch the same loving attention that they gave to the garish palaces of Saddam Hussein. All the NRO data was stuffed inside DeFanti’s laptop now. It wasn’t just a flat simple map, oh, no. It was an interactive, topographic, 3-D computer model map, military-style, just like the Delta Force studied before they parachuted into some hellhole in the middle of nowhere. Tom DeFanti could ride across his Colorado spread with a mouse instead of a horse. He dreaded the day when he would really prefer life that way.
The Dot-Commie turned with solemn interest to DeFanti’s second telescope. “So, Tom, what’s with the tarp on this cool new hardware?”
DeFanti felt a pill-driven mental pang. He scratched below the hat brim. “I don’t much care for that one, kid.”
“Why not?”
“Because it auto-aligns to the zenith angle. It’s got a forty-thousand-object stellar database built in. That’s not a telescope. That thing’s a damn Nintendo.”
“Nintendo, the Japanese get! So, mind if I boot this baby up? Looks like terrific seeing up here tonight. The clarity of those skies!”
DeFanti clenched his chilly, wrinkled hands. “Yeah, except for your jet trail! That’s a cloud of burning kerosene! You add that filth to the smog from the drought, and those wildfires on federal land . . . What has a man got to do?”
The Dot-Commie touched a fat black switch on the base of the telescope. The digital instrument perked up with an instant click and an obedient hum. “Wow, sweet! So, Tom, what’s on our viewing agenda tonight?”
DeFanti glanced at the screen of his laptop. “An Iridium will flash at 9:17. There’s a wonky old Soviet booster I’ve been keeping an eye on—pretty soon, it burns out big time. And after midnight, they’re parking a MAGNUM/VORTEX in its graveyard orbit. We might catch a little glimpse of that, if we’re lucky.” He looked up. “Were you ever cleared for that one? MAGNUM/VORTEX?”
“Oh, sure. I’m cleared.