‘All very impressive, Malenfant,’ said Della, ‘but I’m hardly likely to be overwhelmed by engineering gosh-wow numbers. This isn’t the 1960s. You really think you need to assemble all this space hardware just to lose a little waste?’
‘Surely. What we plan is to use rocket combustion chambers as high-temperature, high-volume incinerators.’ He led them to a show board, a giant flow diagram showing mass streams, little rockets with animated yellow flames glowing in their hearts. ‘We reach two to three thousand Centigrade in there, twice as high as in most commercial incinerators, which are based on rotary kiln or electric plasma technology. We feed the waste material through at high speed, first to break it down and then to oxidize it. Any toxic products are removed by a multistage cleansing process that includes scrubbers to get acidic gases out of the exhaust.
‘We think we can process most poisonous industrial by-products, and also nerve gas and biological weapons, at a much greater speed and a fraction the cost of conventional incinerators. We think we’ll be able to process tons of waste every second. We could probably tackle massive ecological problems, like cleaning out poisoned lakes.’
‘Getting rich by cleaning the planet,’ Della said.
Malenfant grinned, and Emma knew he had worked his way onto home ground. ‘Representative, that’s the philosophy of my corporation. We live in a closed economy. We’ve girdled the Earth, and we have to be aware that we’re going to have to live with whatever we produce, useful goods or waste … But, if you can spot the flows of goods and materials and economic value, it’s still possible to get rich.’
Cornelius Taine had walked away from the others. Now he was clapping, slowly and softly. Gradually he caught the attention of Malenfant and Della.
‘Captain Future. I forgot you were here,’ Malenfant said sourly.
‘Oh, I’m still here. And I have to admire the way you’re handling this. The plausibility. I believe you’re even sincere, on the level of this cover-up.’
Maura Della said, ‘Cover-up? What are you talking about?’
‘Key Largo,’ said Cornelius. ‘That’s what this is really all about. Isn’t it, Malenfant?’
Malenfant glowered at him, calculating.
Here we go, Emma thought bleakly. Not for the first time in her life with Malenfant she had absolutely no idea what was going to come next, as if she was poised over a roller-coaster drop.
Cornelius said, ‘I watched your Delaware speech the other night.’
Malenfant looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Expanding across the Galaxy, all of that? I’ve given that talk a dozen times.’
‘I know,’ said Cornelius. ‘And it’s admirable. As far as it goes.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That you haven’t thought it through. You say you’re planning a way for mankind to live forever. Getting off the Earth is the first step, et cetera. Fine. But what then? What is forever? Do you want eternity? If not, what will you settle for? A billion years, a trillion?’ He waved a hand at the sun-drenched sky. ‘The universe won’t always be as hospitable as this warm bath of energy and light. Far downstream –’
‘Downstream?’
‘I mean, in the far future – the stars will die. It is going to be cold and dark, a universe of shadows. Do you hope that humans, or human descendants, will survive even then? … You haven’t thought about this, have you? And yet it’s the logical consequence of everything you’re striving for.
‘And there is more,’ Cornelius said. ‘Perhaps you are right that we are alone in this universe, the first minds of all. Since the universe is believed to have evolved from others, we may be the first minds to have emerged in a whole string of cosmoses. That is an astounding thought. And if it is true – what is our purpose? That, you see, is perhaps the most fundamental question facing mankind, and ought to shape everything you do, Malenfant. Yet I see no sign in any of your public statements that you have given any consideration to all this …’
The meaning of life? Was this guy for real? But Emma shivered, as if in this hot desert light the wind of a billion years was sweeping over her.
‘We understand, you see,’ said Cornelius.
‘Understand what?’
‘That you are trying to initiate a clandestine return to space here.’
Malenfant barked, ‘Bull hockey.’
Emma and Maura Della spoke together,
‘Malenfant, he alleged this earlier –’
‘If this is true –’
‘Oh, it’s true,’ Cornelius said. ‘Come clean, Malenfant. The truth is he wants to do more than fire off rockets to burn waste. He wants to build a rocket ship – in fact a fleet of rocket ships – and launch them from here, the heart of the desert, and send them all the way to the asteroids.’
Malenfant said nothing.
Della was visibly angry. ‘This is not what I came here for.’
Cornelius said, ‘Malenfant, we back you. A mission to a NEO, a near-Earth object, makes obvious economic and technical sense: the first step in any expansion off-planet, in the short to medium term. And in the long term, it could make the difference.’
Della said, ‘What difference?’
‘The difference,’ Cornelius said easily, ‘between the survival of the human species, and its extinction.’
‘So is that what you came to tell me, you swivel-eyed freak?’ snapped Malenfant. ‘That I get to save the world?’
‘Actually we think it’s possible,’ said Cornelius evenly.
Della frowned, eyebrows arched sceptically. ‘Really. So tell us how the world will end.’
‘We don’t know how. We think we know when, however. Two hundred years from now.’
The number – its blunt precision – startled them to silence.
Malenfant looked from one to the other – the suspicious ex-wife, the frowning Congressman, the mysterious prophet – and Emma saw he was, rarely for him, hemmed in.
Malenfant drove them back to the Portakabin. They travelled in silence, sunk in their respective moods, wary of each other. Only Cornelius, self-absorbed, seemed in any way content.
At the cabin Malenfant served them drinks, beer and soda and water, and they stood in the Californian desert.
Voices drifted over the baked ground, amplified and distorted, as a slow countdown proceeded.
Malenfant kept checking his watch. It was a fat, clunky Rolex. No implants or active tattoos for Reid Malenfant, no sir. For a man with his eye on the future, Emma thought, he often seemed wedded to the past.
The firing started.
Emma saw a spark of light, an almost invisible flame at the base of the stand, billowing white smoke. And then the noise came, a nonlinear crackle tearing at the air. The ground shook, as if she was witnessing some massive natural phenomenon, a waterfall or an earthquake, perhaps. But this was nothing natural.
Malenfant had once taken her to see a Shuttle launch. She’d had tears in her eyes then, from sheer exhilaration at the man-made power of the thing. And there were tears now, she found to her reluctant surprise, even at the sight of this pathetic,