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a civilian jumpsuit and trying very hard—and failing—not to look military, stepped onto the platform behind him. He pointed. “Up-E over that way, sir.”

“I can read, George.”

Together, they crossed the open deck, following the guide arrows displayed within their in-heads. The E, the Quito Space Elevator,hung directly overhead, a silvery thread vanishing straight up into the zenith. Koenig felt like a rubbernecking tourist,but it had been years since he’d been up-E to Quito Synchorbital, and he was enjoying the memories.

The next up-E pod rested in its cradle at the base of the elevator cable as a line of people filed on board. The pods were designed to carry up to 112 people in seats that swiveled to match the current direction of “down,” a concept that would change depending on whether they were accelerating or decelerating. Each pod, a gleaming silver cigar-shape forty meters long and massing twenty-nine tons, rode a superconducting magfield that kept it tucked in close to the elevator cable itself in a frictionless suspension. They moved up or down the cable under magnetic induction.

Koenig would have much preferred to get to Michaels’s residence at Midway by shuttle, but that would have involved greaterscrutiny at the spaceport and considerably more red tape and expense.

No matter. The E would get him there in a few hours. The two men went through check-in and security; travel on the E was free—itlong ago had paid for itself not only in orbital industry and commerce but in the generation of free electricity—and the securitycheck was pro forma, a stroll through a scanner that peered through clothing to the skin, then continued to image the body’sinterior. “I guess they don’t want us smuggling any nukes up this thing,” Hinkley quipped.

“Probably not a good idea to try,” Koenig replied. “Next up-E is in ten minutes. Let’s get on board.”

They found their seats and settled in. The capsule was about two-thirds full—mostly businesspeople headed up-E to the industrialfacilities at Quito Synchorbital or, farther out, at the anchor planetoid. Settling back in the seat’s automatic embrace,Koenig unfolded his pad and brought up a historical piece he’d been rereading, Vinge’s classic 1993 essay “The Coming TechnologicalSingularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” Historical essays from pre-starflight eras could be wildly amusing. Vingehad missed some points, but, surprisingly, not many. His anticipation of a future time when human technology would evolvebeyond human comprehension was both prescient and apt.

Minutes later, Koenig felt a gentle push back into his seat as the pod began accelerating upward. Had the capsule been propelledby grav drives, like those on spacecraft, he would have fallen into zero-G, but the linear magnetic acceleration of two Gsgave him the feeling of another person sitting on his lap.

Two minutes later at a steady two gravities, the capsule was climbing past an altitude of 140 kilometers and moving at almost 8,500 kilometers per hour. The cabin bulkheads were configured to show an all-around view of surrounding space. In seconds, the deep blue of the Ecuadoran sky had deepened to black, and the stars came out.

Anticipating a boring trip up-E, Koenig read his essay.

 

Quito Space Elevator

Port Ecuador

1047 hours, EST

Barry Wizewski felt old.

The fact hardly surprised him. He was eighty-five, after all. But more to the point, he was a Purist in the Rapturist Church,and through much of his adult life he’d believed that when Jesus returned in the clouds to reclaim His own, He would not wantto find His people weighed down with high-tech enhancements and implants and filled with nanodrugs, all of those vain attemptsto cheat death and fend off old age. Damn it, he was proud of his white and thinning hair. And if he couldn’t live to be 200, so what? It just meant he would be with his Savior thatmuch sooner.

He’d come by the white hair honestly; he considered it a kind of badge of honor, much like the Medal of Honor on his wallat home. He’d been a USNA Marine and won that medal defending the super-computer facility at Tsiolkovsky on the moon.

But sometimes, the aches and pains gnawed at him, and he wondered if just a little antiagnathic nano would be all that sinful.

He stepped off the mag-tube pod and onto the broad plaza of Port Ecuador. He was meeting his daughter here today; she was the chief administrator of Skyport, a part of the orbital complex nearly 38,000 kilometers above his head. It would be good to see Susan again; he hadn’t seen her since she’d been back down the Beanstalk—another name for space elevators, though the origin was always lost on him—for Christmas.

He checked his in-head for the time. Good—she’d be down-E in another few minutes.

When he’d joined the Corps, they’d given him a basic military implant, and he doubted that God would object. It didn’t makehim younger or change his looks; it did allow him to interface with the jungle of computers and machines within which he’dhad to function as a Marine. For a time, he’d been stationed on board ship, and there you couldn’t even open a door withoutthat interface.

And in the meantime, it provided some conveniences, like always knowing the time and being able to do heavy math in your head.

He looked up, his gaze following the sharp thrust of the Beanstalk to its vanishing point at the zenith. With a thought, helinked through to the Godstream to check her schedule.

Yeah . . . it would be so good to see Susan.

 

Venting Tube 18

Quito Space Elevator

Cayambe, Ecuador

1049 hours, EST

The awaited message came to Enrique Valdez down the line of communications relay drones he’d left strung out along the 2.5kilometer length of the venting tube. He was not consciously aware of the message, but the nanobots residing within his brainand the implant electronics there were. Still within what amounted to a dream state, Valdez engaged the repulsor lift of hisaircar and guided it forward, exiting the mouth of the venting tube and arrowing into the center of the vast cavern beyond.

He felt a driving sense of urgency he couldn’t explain.