"Not tawdry," said Bolt.
"Very tawdry," whispered Kathy.
And thus on the floor of Marketing Reemer Bolt found himself the sole authorizer of seventeen million dollars in development funds.
But on this day, the very intelligent Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell misjudged the mettle, of Reemer Bolt, marketing genius of the high-tech industry, for the first time.
He had the bulky instrument loaded on a flatbed truck and carted to a field just across the state border in Salem, New Hampshire. He pointed it at the sky, saying:
"If I don't make it in this world, nobody will make it." Dr. O'Donnell heard about the experiment one hour after Bolt and her scientific staff had left for Salem. She flew to her car, careened out of the parking lot at seventy miles an hour, and then picked up speed. She was doing 165 along Route 93 North. In a Porsche 92RS, no state trooper was going to catch her. And if one did, no speeding ticket would matter. There wouldn't be anyone to sit on a judge's bench. There might not even be any bench.
She knew where in Salem Bolt had gone. The corporation had a field up there for softball games, picnics, and land investment. When she tore onto the field, tires gouging the soft earth, Bolt was staring disconsolately at his feet with the blank eyes of a man who knew it was all over. His normally immaculate pin-striped jacket lay on the ground. He had been scuffing it with his shoes.
All he said when he saw Kathy stumble out of her Porsche was:
"I'm sorry, Kath. I really am. I didn't mean for this to happen. I had no other choice. You stuck me with a seventeen-million-dollar failure. I had to go for it."
"You idiot! We're all done for now."
"Not you, so much. I was the one who did it."
"Reemer, you have some logic glitches in your mentality mode, but downright stupidity is not one of them. If all life goes down the drain, what difference does it make whether it was you or I who pulled the plug?"
"Seventeen million down the drain," said Bolt, pointing to the blackened metallic structure in the middle of the field. "Nothing works on it. Look."
He showed Kathy the remote console her staff had devised. It had to be remote, because the fluorocarbon generator was so cumbersome that it could only be aimed in one direction: straight up. And that meant the sun's unfiltered rays would return in only one direction: straight down. If everything worked as theorized, the fluorocarbon beam would open a window that allowed raw solar radiation to bathe the earth's surface in a circle thirty meters wide. If it worked. Perfectly.
But now Bolt was punching buttons on a dead board. Not even the on light glowed. The fluorocarbon generator stood silently a hundred yards away. Bolt pounded the console. He hated it because it didn't work. Seventeen million dollars and it didn't work. He hit the console again. He would have killed it if it weren't already dead.
Kathy O'Donnell said nothing. Something was happening in the sky. Set against the clouds was an exquisite ring of blue haze, as though the clouds themselves wore a glowing round blue sapphire. She watched the circle. One of her staff members had a pair of binoculars and she ripped them from his neck. Desperately, she tried to focus on the clouds, on the light blue hazy ring.
"Has it been growing larger or smaller? " she demanded. "It think it's smaller," said a staffer, one of about twenty people in white smocks or shirtsleeves. They were all looking at her and Bolt with bewildered expressions.
"Smaller," said Kathy O'Donnell. She was speaking as much to herself as anyone else. "Smaller."
"Yes," said a technician. "I think you're right." Kathy looked at the ground. The grass around the fluorocarbon generator had turned a lighter shade of green. At a distance of about thirty meters, the blades were dark green. Then, as though someone had sprayed a lightening agent, they grew paler, even now becoming a dry whiteness. It was as though someone had drawn the circle of pale grass around the device with a compass. Thirty magnificent, glorious, miraculous feet around the device. It had worked. Perfectly.
"We did it," said Kathy.
"What? The thing doesn't work," said Bolt.
"Not now," replied Dr. Kathy O'Donnell. "But it did work. And it seems our first clear solar window to the sun has given us some interesting side effects."
For the unfiltered solar rays had not only scorched the earth, they had rendered electronic circuits inoperable. The fluorocarbon generator itself was proof. It had been struck and killed by the unfiltered rays.
The eager scientists discovered other side effects. The rays parched plant life, raised the temperature slightly, and burned the skin of living matter in a horrible and unforeseen way. Skin bubbled and blackened, then separated and peeled away. They noticed this when they saw the little furry legs of a chipmunk trying to run out of what was left of its skin.
Some of the scientists turned their heads away. Seeing a poor creature suffer like that plunged Reemer Bolt deep in thought.
If we can make it mobile, and aim it better, we might have a weapons sale, thought Reemer. Or perhaps we could market a screen against the rays. Maybe both. The future was limitless. As bright as the sun.
The budget was tripled and, within a month, they had constructed an aiming mechanism. There was only one small glitch. The fluorocarbon stream could be controlled in the amount of ozone shield it opened, but it could not be aimed very exactly. They could direct the beam elsewhere instead of straight up, but they were just not sure where it would land. Which meant that Chemical Concepts would control this immense new energy source so that life on earth wasn't threatened, but couldn't direct it anywhere in particular. This shot the boards out from under Marketing. It was like owning a car you couldn't steer: if you can't steer it, you can't sell it.
"How far off this time?" asked Kathy. She had once again found Bolt using the fluorocarbon gun, as they were calling it now, without her permission.
"Two or three thousand miles," said Bolt. "I think you'll have to upgrade your targeting computer. I'll help you get more money."
"Over where did we open up a hole in the ozone shield?" asked Kathy.
"Not sure. Maybe China or Russia. Maybe neither. We'll find out when someone's electronics shut down, or if mass skin problems develop somewhere. If it's Russia, I don't think we have to worry. They won't sue for damages."
In his somewhat shrewd way, Reemer Bolt was right. Russia wouldn't sue. It was planning to start World War III.
He was old. Even for a Russian general. He had known and buried Stalin. He had known and buried Lenin. He had buried them all. Every one of them, in some way or other, at some time or other, had said to him:
"Alexei. What would we ever do without you?"
And Alexei Zemyatin would answer: "Think. Hopefully, think."
Even during the harshest times, Field Marshal Alexei Zemyatin would speak his mind to any of the Soviet leaders. He would, in brief, call them fools. And they would listen to him because he had saved their lives so many times before.
When Lenin was fighting both America and Britain on Russian soil after the First World War, and a hundred groups plotted the overthrow of the Communist government, Zemyatin confronted Lenin's worst fears. He was at the time the dictator's secretary.
"I dread the joining of all our enemies," said Lenin. "It is the one thing that will destroy us. If ever they stop fighting among themselves, we are ruined."
"Unless you help them to form a united front against you."
"Never," said Lenin. The one hope the Communists had was that their disparate enemies would keep fighting among themselves. Otherwise they could destroy the young revolution.
"Then let me ask you to think, Great Leader. If a hundred groups are all working against you, each with a different idea and a different leader, it will be as it was against the czar. No matter how many are killed, the opposition will survive. And then, as happened to the czar, a group will succeed against you one day.
"That will come later, and then only maybe. Right now we are fighting for our lives," said Lenin.
"Later always comes, fool. That is why God gives us brains to plan with."
"Alexei, what are you getting at? I warn you, you are not dealing with a small matter here. Your life is wagered on it."
"No, it isn't," said Zemyatin, who knew that Lenin needed argument in his life. So few now were willing to argue with him, at least not successfully. "Today there are shootings even in Moscow. Your secret police kill one group, but still there are dozens more untouched. Why?"
"Because the sewers spawn different bugs."
"Because none of them are joined. If you have a tree with a hundred branches, every branch will fall when you cut down the trunk. But if you have a hundred dandelion weeds, you will never be rid of them. Forests can be felled. But to my knowledge no lawn, not even that of the czar on the Baltic, was ever free of dandelions."
"But something that strong could destroy us."
"Not if we run it. And who has better knowledge of these counterrevolutionary groups than our own secret police? We will not only join these groups into one strong oak, but we will fertilize this tree. Prune it occasionally. And then, when we wish, we will cut it down with a single chop of the ax."