Pillar to the Sky (31 page)

Franklin had picked the location for this meeting well. To get into this room required connecting flights from Hawaii or Fiji and then to Tarawa. If need be a lot of “sudden” paperwork could tie up uninvited visitors forever at Tarawa. Permission to land on the island of Aranuka, now that the tower was up, was strictly limited to aircraft that had first landed at Tarawa for a rigorous security inspection before being cleared to bring in supplies, with carefully selected pilots at the controls for the final leg, hauling in the reels of wire and personnel with what were called “blue pass tags.” These pilots were armed and if that defense failed, they were instructed to fly straight into the ocean before allowing anyone to take control of their planes. There would be no repeat of 9/11, at least by any aircraft.

Though no one spoke openly of it, the United States Navy did seem to have a special interest in events around Kiribati, and at times an Aegis-class cruiser or destroyer could be sighted lingering on the horizon. The few times an unauthorized aircraft started to approach the island, the ship’s high-gain X-band target acquisition radar would switch on, “painting” the aircraft and then suggesting it turn about back to Fiji or land in Tarawa for clearance. At other times an Australian or British ship would take up position as well.

It was obvious that although he was in semi-exile, Franklin had friends somewhere who understood America had a stake in the successful completion of the tower, and Australia and New Zealand could already sense the potential economic impact of the tower on the entire region in the years to come.

*   *   *

The room where this very private meeting was about to be held could seat fifty comfortably and had a curving glass ceiling that offered a spectacular view of the tower from its base; at night its illuminated surface rose arrow-like to the heavens. Everyone present was definitely blue pass only. Gary could not help but notice with pride that Victoria and Jason had been invited. Like any father, he had a lot of doubts at first about who his daughter’s heart had settled on, but over time this young man, with his decidedly Oxford accent and British manners and mannerisms, had won his heart. Jason had really won Gary over when, over a bottle of good Scotch that Jason had provided, the young Briton had actually managed to explain how the game of cricket worked. The two were laughing uproariously by the end of the evening, and the following day Gary took him out for the male bonding ritual of shooting flintlock rifles at a nearby range where security personnel, nearly all of them citizens of Kiribati in constant training with some former American and British military types, put them through their paces. Whenever Gary showed up with his treasured flintlock, he always caused a stir, not just because of the uniqueness of his gun, but because he was one of the two people who had played the greatest role in making the dream that was transforming their world a reality.

It was a hobby Gary had indulged in as a young man, and he was embarrassed by the extent that Parkinson’s had affected his ability to hold a Pennsylvania long rifle steady; he could barely hit the target when seated and resting the weapon. Jason, with his fascination and professional interest in early technologies, waxed on at great length about the historical debate and mythology of “Yankee riflemen” versus “lobsterbacks.” His aim was little better than Gary’s, who could sense the young man was deliberately missing in order to be polite. As they talked about the technology behind the weapon, Jason reminded him that it was a British officer named Ferguson who had invented a breech-loading rifle seventy years ahead of its time, which if adopted rather than mockingly rejected by higher-ups, would have changed the course of the Revolution. Unfortunately “for our side,” as Jason defined it, Ferguson was killed at the Battle of Kings Mountain early in 1781, though at that point it was already too late to “bring you colonials to your senses.”

On the trip back to the platform, the topic shifted to disruptive technologies and the impact of that thesis on further development of the Pillar. Professor Garlin had actually written a book denouncing its construction, pointing out all the hazards both to low-orbit navigation and the stream of seventy years of technological development of rocket-powered flight. The tower, she contended, would end that research, putting hundreds of thousands out of work at a time when some firms were finally proving that traditional methods of access to space were becoming viable. Sounding like an anthropologist, she then went on a lengthy diatribe about how it was technology that was destroying humanity, not saving it, and raised the old argument that space would not be the answer to humanity’s woes until its problems “down here” were solved. Garlin’s book had gained favorable notice in several major papers and journals. She was now a regular on the talk show circuit as a critic of the program and had suddenly become close friends with Senator Proxley.

By the time Gary and Jason returned from the shooting range, they reeked of black powder and their hands and faces were covered in soot, but they reveled in their appearance. Gary said but one thing to Victoria when she greeted them at the door to their small apartment on the platform: “If you don’t marry him, you’re crazy.”

*   *   *

Franklin stepped up to the podium, turned to take in the view—a spinner just beginning its ascent, jet engine thundering—then nodded to his audience, who stood to applaud. But it was obvious he was nervous as he extended a hand and gestured for all to sit down.

“I only hope you will applaud when I am done speaking,” he said, and there was actually a bit of a tremor in his voice.

Only a few in the room—Gary, Eva, the Brit and his American partner, and Fuchida—knew what was coming.

He paused for a moment and looked back at the tower, the roar of the spinner’s jet engine piercing the room as it rotated around the Pillar, spinning another layer into place.

“It is a magnificent sight, is it not?”

He paused, and, of course, there were nods of agreement, even some more applause.

“And who of us just seven years ago would have dreamed that we could have reached this far.”

More nods of approval, but the audience could sense something was up.

“But it will never be economically viable.”

Now there was total silence.

“If you wish to drag me out and toss me into the sea when this meeting is done, that is your right. However, given my ethnic heritage, I do detest lynching, so let us refrain from that.”

He turned his back to the audience, watching as the spinner continued to climb heavenward.

“Perhaps I have led all but a few of you a little bit astray. Let me say in my defense, though, that I had to in order to get us this far. Remember in the old Westerns, when a group got lost in the desert, the leader promised that water was just over the next ridge, even though he knew it was still fifty miles off? I had to play that role, my friends, in order for us to get to this point, and now that we are within sight of the real goal, I hope you will hear me out.”

“Some of you might have picked up a hint when I referred to this as Pillar One. You see, all along I saw it as that. The first pillar. Most of you smiled and nodded, realizing that once we proved our point with this one, more would surely follow—and I did say that this was simply the first tower and a second would follow. Already there is an indication that the Chinese, having recruited a few renegades, shall we say, from Dr. Fuchida’s team, are now preparing to start construction in Indonesia, and I wish them well. Competition fuels innovation.”

That had indeed been troublesome for Fuchida and now for a host of lawyers in Japan, America, Kiribati, and China who were arguing whether the three men who Fuchida had fired early in the project—and who were now living somewhere in China, without doubt in great luxury—had engaged in patent violations. One could always get by even the tightest security with terabytes of data, if planned for sufficiently in advance. Regardless of who won or lost the legal battle, the Chinese were rapidly moving toward the start of their own tower.

“I will confess to you now that early on I realized one fundamental flaw with our current design, but at that stage we were already committed to building the Pillar as it was originally designed. That, and technological innovation is always racing ahead, and before this first strand went up, a far better concept was laid before me.

“Often with rapid technological innovations, in the time it takes to get from what they used to call the drawing board to actual construction, a newer technology is developed. Thus it is now with our tower. It is obsolete even as we build it.”

Now there was a stir in the room, and one of his primary investors asked loud enough for all to hear, with plenty of expletives added in, why in hell were they building it in the first place.

Franklin nodded to him, thinking that the investor was about to become a former friend.

“Because we
are
building it,” Franklin replied. “Building it and here is the entire point of this meeting. We are building it not to be used as a commercial launch system. We are building it not to be eventually used as a commercial platform, to put satellites into geosynch orbit at a fraction of the cost, or from that high point atop the tower to hurl spacecraft to the moon, Mars, and beyond, again at a fraction of the cost. We are building a tower in order to prove we can build it, then use it to haul up the hundreds of tons of additional material needed to build the
real
Pillar, the ribbon design you already know we have been working on.”

“My God, Franklin, what in hell are you talking about?” the investor shouted. “We’ve sunk nearly forty billion into this so far. Let this ribbon thing of yours wait. Start sending up commercial launches, we could be doing that by year’s end and at least starting some return cash flow. And at least get some payback for a while.”

“Before we can even do that,” Franklin replied, “we all know we still have to spend another ten billion to strengthen Pillar One for survivability from debris impacts and to handle any kind of real commercial load, unless Dr. Fuchida wishes to give us wire for free, and our allies in the launch business give us eight more launches to geosynch—three of them manned for long duration work up there—for free as well.”

The Brit smiled and shook his head.

“You have the launches at cost, I’ll concede that, my friend, but I am barely keeping my head above water as is. I’ve all but put into receivership all my other ventures to keep this one going.”

“So what are you driving at, then?” the investor shouted.

Franklin, still a bit of a showman at heart, put on a glove lined with nanotubes, reached under the podium, and produced what appeared to be a black but highly reflective ribbon nearly a foot across. He slowly turned it edgewise, and as he did so, it became almost invisible. It did not flutter, though, the way a ribbon of fabric would; it was perfectly rigid, like a ribbon of tungsten steel. As he turned it back toward his audience again that mirror-like sheen made it almost invisible.

“This, my friends, is the stuff of the real tower, but we need what we are building right now in order to finally get this up there,” and as he spoke he nodded back to the tower, the spinner that had been timed to lift off just as he began speaking now a barely visible dot in the sky above.

The room fell silent as he held the length of ribbon aloft. Although he did have a protective glove on, he did not seem all that nervous or careful handling it—unlike the time he first held up the nearly invisible wire before many in this group, wearing not just gloves but a protective suit in case an errant puff of air caused it to brush against his body.

“The real tower—the tower I realized five years ago would have to be the real tower—will not be made out of the carbon nanotube strands we are now weaving behind me even as I speak. This, my friends, is the future of tower technology for at least the next twenty years or so, until someone smarter than all of us here thinks up a better idea that none of our team has cooked up yet. As wood and stone were replaced by iron, and iron by steel, so this will replace what we call wire, not just for building the Pillar but a whole new generation of construction projects down here on earth as well.”

He spoke quickly now, so as not to be interrupted and deluged with questions.

“Dr. Fuchida told me five years ago, when he started to mass-produce thread for the first time, that if you threw enough money at the problem and gave him enough time, he could weave what I am holding before you, but it would take at least several years. He finally achieved it three months before we launched our first thread.

“Once Pillar One is sufficiently strengthened its cargo will consist solely of ribbon for several years to come, that and supplies for our astronauts working out at geosynch. There is no time to waste on commercial loads. It means delayed payoff for all of us, but the payoff will be there when we have completed Pillar Two.

“With the first ribbon anchored, adding dozens more ribbons of carbon-60 nanotubing will become easier and cheaper. Haul them up on Pillar One, then drop them down and weave them in place for Pillar Two. Additional ribbons will be deployed as layers atop the first one to strengthen it, or could be run down either side of the first one and stapled or laminated in place, extending the Pillar outward—a dozen meters or more in width, if desired—with stunning load-bearing capacities.

“Then the real payoff begins, my friends. This is not so much about what goes up but what comes down. We’ve gone public with that concept already, this is about clean solar energy. We’re weaving several threads into Pillar One to test the concept. But once Pillar Two, made of ribbon, starts to go online, we can layer in super conductive carbon nanotubing that eventually will handle gigawatts of power. There is the ultimate payoff.”

He paused, taking a deep breath.

“But it will take time. Five years or more at least and not five or six months, as some of you thought, would be the case for financial return.”

“Financial return you promised us,” the angry investor retorted with barely concealed rage.