The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [53]
“That must be pretty hot.”
“It is a different world over there. It is an entirely different erotic universe. That woman has ruined me. She has. She is fantastic. Anjali has made me into some kind of centuries-eaten male statue from the temples of Khajuraho. She and I are like water and fire. There are sexual clashes that yaks can hear in Nepal.”
“What can I really do for you, Tony?”
“Nothing, my man! I swear I’m beyond all help!”
“Just tell it to me, all right? This is Van here.”
Tony checked the bulletproof glass between themselves and the driver’s compartment. “Okay . . . but I really shouldn’t tell you this.”
“Right.” Van started to relax a little. Here it came, then.
“I didn’t want to tell you. You’re forcing it out of me.”
“Right, Tony.”
“I shouldn’t tell you this because there is money in it. A lot of money. And I’ve got a lot to gain by that, so I am not an objective witness here. Bearing that in mind.”
Van nodded silently.
“The KH-13,” Tony said.
A spy satellite. “I’ve heard of it,” Van said.
“It is an overengineered, sorry-ass piece of junk.”
“I heard that, too.”
“Two years behind schedule. Way over budget, hundreds of millions. A launch weight over seven thousand pounds, so it won’t even fit in a standard Titan booster. They cheated DeFanti on that one. The KH-13 is the only U.S. spy satellite in orbit that doesn’t have Tom’s imaging chips. Tom got beat out in the bidding, and you know, that was a crooked deal, but that’s a long story . . . The point is, they are bureaucrats. And they tried to make a new-model spy satellite. They tried to do that and they screwed it up bad, Van. Now, DeFanti could have pulled that stunt off, because he always had this really tight crew of top people—”
“Really quiet,” said Van. “Really quick. And always on time. Top people, but maybe ten percent of the number of technicians that anybody else would use.”
Tony put his shot glass on the limo’s hanging board. “Yeah. I never thought of it quite that way, but yeah, that’s exactly how that worked.”
“So what is the problem?”
“They farmed out the new KH-13 to this bunch of crooked fat cats. So right when America really needs fresh eyes in space, we are screwed. They managed to launch exactly one KH-13, and the stupid bastard is on the blink. It is way too sophisticated and overfeatured, especially in the infrared cameras. The KH-13 is supposed to be able to spot muzzle flashes in real time from automatic weapons in terrorist training camps. That is a crazy thing to ask from a satellite. And whose fault is it that the project is so screwed up? It’s anybody’s fault! Anybody but the almighty Air Force and the NRO! They are looking for somebody to hang it on. They need a fall guy.”
Why was Tony telling him this? “Tony, I’m in cyberspace, not outer space.”
“There is this guy, Michael Hickok.”
Van waited. Here came the rest of it, then.
“Hickok is this black-bag guy who did a lot of dirty work overseas. Chechnya, Central Asia, Kazakhstan where the launch pads are . . . Hickok’s a mercenary. The guy is up for anything. He’s been hired to find some political cover. So you know what the spin is now? It’s all a ‘software problem,’ Van.”
“Ah-ha.” Van scowled. “Blame the coders for it. Blame the geeks.”
“Hickok is going door-to-door looking for somebody to pin that satellite’s problem on. Don’t let that be you. Okay? Because your new outfit is getting some real credibility in the code world. That means that incompetent people will try to drop all their crap problems on you. From a great, great political height.”
“Tony, we’re not looking for any satellite problems at the CCIAB. Trust me here, we’ve got our own problems to hack and plenty of them.”
“Van, look out the