The Goliath Stone (26 page)

Politics is the belief that you know what the cause is.

Sometimes you do.

—WILLIAM CONNORS

C
AST AND
C
REW

Bigfeet:

JUAN HENCKE
—Director of a university astronomy department

TED MENDEZ
—Actual astronomer

TOBY GLYER
—Engineer, physician, and creator of life, but easy to get along with

ABDALLAH CHAHINE
—Very ill traveler of Egyptian birth. Also chief auditor, Aswan Dredge Project. Poor digestion.

MAY WYNDHAM
—Rocket scientist, test pilot, idealist

GORDON WYNDHAM
—Financier, engineer, idealist

BERT CRASSEN
—U.S. senator from Michigan, failed writer, chairman of Internet Regulatory Committee. Soylent.

JANE BODINE
—U.S. representative from Arkansas, recycling heiress, three times widowed. Soylent.

FRANCES HILL
—Agent provocateuse. Former prostitute.

RORY DENNETT
—News performer, CNN

WADE CURTIS
—Author, engineer, historian, commentator, veteran, genius

CHARLES OPIE
—Marshall, United States Department of Homeland Security (U.S. DHS)

WILLIAM CONNORS
—Crazy son of a bitch

LORELEI HUNTZ
—Customs inspector, Ecuador. Agent provocateuse. Former male prostitute.

CRISTINA GOMEZ
—Chauffeur, bodyguard, guide. Former prostitute.

MYCROFT YELLOWHORSE
—Director-at-large, JNAIT Council of Chiefs. World’s Foremost Authority.

KEITH DANTON
—Data analyst, U.S. DHS

ALICE JOHNSON
—Encyclopedic analyst, U.S. DHS. Unexploded bomb.

CLARENCE FEET
—Weightlifter, JNAIT

SAMANTHA BERLIOZ TORRES
—Network hacker. Idealist.

ARTHUR FAHY
—News performer, AOL-CBS

STEPHEN WELLMAN
—U.S. attorney general

JOSEPHINE BARTLETT
—Systems programmer, Littlemeade. Redefiner of the term “machine code.”

BOB FOSTER
—President of the United States of America, such as it is. Soylent.

RENEE DANDRIDGE
—Janitor, Littlemeade. Conceivably the most careful who ever lived.

LISA FROST
—U.S. deputy attorney general, later attorney general

GABRIELLA CAMPBELL
—Late wife of William Connors and therefore possibly a saint

TURNER LEXINGTON
—Chairman of the Gaia Society. Soylent.

REBECCA BLOOM
—Talk show host. Former field hockey player.

ISOBEL ROSS
—Vice president of the USA, then president

JOHN FINCH
—Late president of the USA. Former window washer.

TOM SHAKE
—Director of U.S. DHS. Harvard MBA. Soylent.

EVA IBARGUREN
—Chauffeur, assassin, agent provocateuse. Former prostitute.

DAVE SIM
—Writer/artist of
Cerebus the Aardvark,
a three-hundred-issue comic that made sense as a continuous story

OLIVER CARTER
—Agent, U.S. CIA. The kind Hollywood thinks all of them are.

VICTOR APPLETON
—Author, Tom Swift books (first series)

WILLIAM GOLDMAN
—Author of
The Princess Bride,
etc.; screenwriter,
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
etc.

WILLIAM GOLDING
—Author of
Lord of the Flies
; not to be mistaken for the above even in a very bad light

NARYA FARTHINGSWORTH
—Romance novelist and subversive

LESLIE REYNOLDS
—Humorist, detective, bombshell, and widow of Nathaniel Reynolds

NATHANIEL REYNOLDS
—Late SF author, on ice. Molecular biologist. Friend of Ivar Jorgenson.

IVAR JORGENSON
—Late SF author, fantasist, legendary charmer

JACK BERNSTEIN
—Astronaut. Physicist, physician, civilian (defined as someone who can’t be hanged for quitting his job).

SAM QUINN
—Astronaut. Pilot, two-star general USAF.

STEPHEN EDMUNDSON
—Astronaut. Weapons officer, major USAF.

MARTIN TILLERY
—Astronaut. Engineer, ABD physicist, commander USN.

CHARLEY LOOMIS
—Astronaut. Aviator, weapons officer, commodore USN.

CLAIRE DAUGHENBAUGH
—Astronaut. Physician, captain USN. Unexpectedly interesting person.

Anklebiters:

SOCRATES
—Conscience of society. Engaging pest.

WIELAND
—Smith and weaponeer. Friendly guy who only ever gets mad if someone burns his barn down.

SET
—Godslayer. Not disposed to cut
anyone
slack.

Backdrop:

SOYLENTS
—Activists whose reforms always seem to shorten the lifespans of human beings

TRIPLE CRASH
—The collapse of the stock market, the dollar, and U.S. productivity in the same year

LITTLEMEADE OPERATION SYSTEMS
—The outfit that finally succeeded in making nanotechnology happen. Able to weather Soylent harassment due to its original charter as a recycling firm, rendering it bulletproof. Later absorbed by Watchstar, a corporation whose stated goal was to remove debris from the sky.

WYNDHAM LAUNCH
—An Ecuadorean company established by U.S. citizens who were disillusioned by NASA’s redefining itself as an organization that makes TV shows—dull ones.

BRIAREUS
—1) A mission to use nanotech to bring back an asteroid for use by Earth industry 2) In Greek mythology, a Titan with fifty heads and a hundred arms, who set out to conquer Heaven

JNAIT
—The Joint Negotiating Alliance of Indian Tribes, intended to present a united front to outsiders irrespective of internal disputes

LILITH.COM
—The uncensored search engine. Named for a character of Biblical mythology who never got to tell her side of the story.

AERO TRANSCIELO
—Successor company to Wyndham Launch. Employee-owned.

PLANETS
SYMPHONY
—Composed by Gustav Holst. Much of the soundtrack of
The Right Stuff
.

ANDES MOTORS
—An offshoot of Aero Transcielo

NATIONAL FIREARM REGISTRY
—A federal police organization undermining the authority of states whose laws do not infringe the right to keep and bear arms

AOL-CBS
—Principal media outlet in the United States of America. Keeps computer dossiers on its investors.

ACME
—Only delivery service in history with a suborbital division. Overnight delivery, anywhere on Earth, up to ten tons.

OTEC
—Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, generating power from the temperature differential between surface water and water below 100 fathoms, which is always at 277 Kelvin everywhere except near volcanoes. First operational system was built in the 1920s. Due to the nutrients in the coolant pumped up, the only pollutant is fish.

TOR BOOKS BY LARRY NIVEN

N-Space

Playgrounds of the Mind

Destiny’s Road

Rainbow Mars

Scatterbrain

The Draco Tavern

Ringworld’s Children

Stars and Gods

WITH EDWARD M. LERNER

Fleet of Worlds

Juggler of Worlds

Destroyer of Worlds

Betrayer of Worlds

Fate of Worlds

WITH STEVEN BARNES

Achilles’ Choice

The Descent of Anansi

Saturn’s Race

The Moon Maze Game

WITH JERRY POURNELLE and STEVEN BARNES

The Legacy of Heorot

Beowulf’s Children

WITH BRENDA COOPER

Building Harlequin’s Moon

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHORS

Larry Niven is the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces. He lives in Chatsworth, California.

Matthew Joseph Harrington is the author of
Soul Survivor
. He is currently living with fantasy artist Valerie Anne Shoemaker and four cats in San Jose, California.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

THE GOLIATH STONE

Copyright © 2013 by Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Drive Communications, New York

Cover art © 2012 by Shutterstock

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-3323-0 (hardcover)

ISBN 9781429960717 (e-book)

First Edition: June 2013