The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [80]
“And you watch that stuff on purpose?”
“Bollywood movies are great. Fiza, that’s such a wonderful film. It’s all about a Moslem girl from Bombay whose brother is a mujahideen terrorist.” Dottie’s voice fell. “I cried and cried.”
Dottie had been crying and crying, thought Van with a pang. She was being so bright and sweet to him. Two minutes together, and it was as if they had never parted at all. But he knew she had suffered. He had suffered. He had suffered so much he had no idea what to do with his feelings.
He hauled Ted back out of his crib and set him on his knee. He couldn’t keep his hands off the kid. Ted was such a lively presence that holding him was like licking a fresh battery. “So, who was that babysitter who was here?”
“That’s Dr. Ludewig. She used to run a radio telescope in Denmark. We get a lot of visiting scholars from overseas here. This place, it’s a lot like Cerre Tololo in Chile. For colleagues in Europe and Asia, we’re such a big deal.” Dottie turned to him. “I’m gonna get some great publications out of all this.”
“I thought you were still two years away from your ‘first light.’”
“Sure, we are, but running the telescope is just part of our action.” Dottie was always completely serious whenever she discussed her career. “It’s all about leveraging digital instruments with the Net. We’re building the world’s biggest star archives here. Lots bigger than MAST or HEASARC. They’re already using us for their backups and mirror-sites, because our bandwidth is so hot. We’re the only physical backbone that NSFnet has crossing the Continental Divide. We’ve got tremendous pipes, stacks of equipment, machines we haven’t even unwrapped yet. Racks and racks of numerical simulators. It was ‘pre-owned’ by the feds, but we’re astronomers, so that doesn’t matter to us. We’re like kids in a candy store.”
This was a billionaire federal contractor at work, thought Van, with a potent mix of private and public money. It had to get like this, when fewer and fewer ultra-rich people controlled bigger and bigger chunks of America’s economy. Peel a few labels off, and the government’s suppliers and buyers turn out to be the very same guy.
Van understood that well now, because he watched the federal government’s “Industrial Base Management” happening every day. Van himself was both Mondiale R&D and CCIAB Tech Support. He was knee-deep in the system, too.
Jeb called it “the Smoking Room.” Step one: get those heavy operators into the smoke-filled room. Step two: close all the doors and windows. Step three: pick only the contractors who are willing to play the game. When you leave government, then they’ll hire you. You’ll be them, and they’ll be you. The Smoking Room had a built-in revolving door.
“Yesterday’s Technology at Tomorrow’s Prices.” That was how the National Reconnaissance Office had gotten itself a marble office complex and the best cafeteria in Washington—even though, officially, nobody had ever heard of the National Reconnaissance Office. They ran satellites. They were real. Real, real secret.
The Smoking Room. The Grease Machine. The military-industrial complication. Van’s head was swimming. “Mmmm.”
Dottie was concerned. “Is it your altitude sickness?”
“Yeah, honey. Sorry.” He hated disappointing her.
“Sweetie, you just relax awhile now.” She took Ted away from him and put the baby back in his crib. Then she fluffed up a pillow, flopped Van on the bed, and pulled his shoes off. “It’s so late. Did you eat anything? You know what? I have some really good Chardonnay. That’ll fix you up.”
Van had to laugh. It was doing him such good to hear her rattle on. “How good is it?”
“It’ll relax you, you’ll fall right asleep.” Her blue eyes were full of wifely promise. “Tomorrow, though, we’ll do everything.”
Van accepted a glass. Van didn’t much care for sweet, girly chardonnays, but this one was good enough to get him up on his elbow. “Wow, honey, this stuff’s great.”
“I can afford it,” she told him. “They pay us a lot and there’s nothing to spend money