Firebird

Three

ThreeNot sixty seconds later, while Machuzak dredged his memory for the name of the police officer from last night, the phone rang. Nathaniel stared long without moving. When he at last answered, the voice on the other end didn’t wait for a greeting.

“Hello, Machuzak?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“Not Jesse James. Richard Garrett here.”

“Mr. Garrett, w…why—?”

“I’ll tell you why. With Leonard and Krieg-Zuber in the state they’re in, I’m gonna have to get more involved with the day-to-day here, and I’m callin the division heads for a meeting.”

“W…what’s happened?” What else could have happened?

“Well, Mac—or should I call you Cassandra—?” The nickname was going to stick, Nathaniel realized as the knot in his stomach twisted again. “You weren’t spittin in the wind yesterday. That accident’s got a lot of people spooked, real spooked. The board’s gone loco overnight—Hold on a second… Mac, can you get up here? On the double.”

After staring at the dead phone in his hand for one second, Nathaniel bounded up to the third floor where he collided with Garrett as he waddled into the conference room. “Moravec, the thief who runs GlobeTex, wants an explanation—now. He’s threatening to pull out.”

Texas Global, one of the world’s largest renewable energy concerns and CFRC’s largest investor. Machuzak suddenly felt hit from every side. This was no coincidence. Sabotage the program, pull out. Eliminate the competition. What should he tell Garrett? “They’re not spooked. They’re trying to shut us down.” He stopped there.

“What’s the point, Mac?” the chairman rejoined. “Why join the consortium to begin with?”

It had been a question since the day Rasmussen and Garrett, this plump maverick who’d made billions in oil and poured millions back into pet energy projects, had founded CFRC. GlobeTex was a leader in wind, solar, bio. Fusion made sense for them at the same level solar had once made sense for BP. Evidently not. Stop, Zuber talks like this. About to blurt out to Garrett the discovery of the busbar, Slava’s warning came to him: “Who are you?”

“This way’s a more permanent death,” Nathaniel said to the chairman. “The people who hold the purse strings are waiting for the right moment to kill off the competition.” The moment could always be engineered.

Garrett didn’t answer, only switched on the big screen. A second later a tall, suited, androgynous figure jumped out at them in poor 3-D.

“Who is this person?” asked Moravec, who appeared more female than male, with so little intonation that he, she or it might have been an advanced bot.

“This is Dr. Machuzak, one of our physicists. I was on the phone with him when you called. He can explain what happened better than I.”

“Explain?” Machuzak erupted, suddenly crossing into overload. “Damn it, Richard, who can explain any of this? Prometheus’ predecessor worked. Prometheus itself was behaving okay during the pre-ops.” He ran his hand through his hair, taken aback at his own outburst but unable to control it. “Christ, I told you it was f*****g nuts to connect it to the grid. That’s five years away—if we can get the damned thing to ignite.”

The faintest glimmer of a smile spread across the remote Moravec’s lips. “I’ll give you six months.”

“Huh?” Machuzak swiveled. What could he possibly—

“Our contract is up in six months, from today, as it happens. In six months we pull out—unless you ignite your machine.”

Machuzak found himself staring openmouthed at the screen. Ignition. A self-sustaining fusion reaction. The stuff that powers stars.

“It…it can’t be done,” he managed to stammer.

“I’m sorry, the matter is out of my hands.”

“It’s…it’s impossible, I tell you.”

“In that case, good-bye.”

The image vanished but Machuzak continued to stare. “It’s impossible,” he stammered again. Even as he uttered his disbelief, he saw that more than the fate of a single lab was at stake. In its gargantuan magnificence, Prometheus was the last vestige of the American fusion program. If the lab went, ITER remained. Alone.

Suddenly, Nathaniel felt himself peering downward into a vast abyss. From a great distance, Garrett’s voice penetrated. “We’d better call a general meeting, Mac.”

* * * *

Rumors had gone viral by 9:00 a.m., and the weary lab personnel gathering in the main auditorium sensed that something unprecedented was about to take place. That much is true, Machuzak thought. In the crush he found himself seated next to Toshifume Matsushima, the lab’s great thinker, who remarked in that Eastern way of his, “The accident has spurred the regime to new heights of watchfulness and vigor.” Watchfulness and vigor, Nathaniel agreed, skeptical that the “accident” designation would survive ‘til the end of the day. At the same moment, a pair of workmen slid closed the big doors at the back of the stage, doors that were normally open to reveal the friendly hills beyond. Soon the room overflowed with five hundred shell-shocked people bracing themselves for the worst. In the commotion Leonard Rasmussen hobbled down to the stage on crutches and seated himself with Richard Garrett.

When the ringtones finally died away and the pall settled, Leonard took the microphone. No, he does not look well, worse than yesterday. Nathaniel felt a great pity for the director. “Friends,” Rasmussen said, voice unusually hoarse, “all of you know that for ten years I have pushed this laboratory toward the goal of infinite energy. Hotter, denser, longer, I always said…” A few in the audience chuckled nervously as Leonard coughed. “We have survived indifferent and hostile governments, economic crises; we have surmounted every obstacle thrown in our path except Nature’s own. Today we have suddenly been called to face our greatest challenge. We will rise to the occasion, but I shall let Richard Garrett, chairman of our board, explain what has taken place.”

Garrett, all two hundred thirty pounds now on display, took the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said to the restless sea, “we indeed face a crisis. You folks know I’ve supported this lab’s work since Leonard and I set up the consortium. And I mean through hell and high water. A lot a people think fusion is a pie-in-the-sky pipedream. If any of you still have doubts, take a look at this mornin’s sites. You gotta understand that yesterday’s accident…” Virtually without prologue he then dropped the last hour’s bombshell: GlobeTex, CFRC’s principal investor, would pull out unless within six months from today the lab achieved, “as you folks call it, ignition.”

Machuzak was certain a riot would break out. Shouts of “Impossible!” rose from all sides, echoing his own first outburst. What Moravec was demanding was that they achieve the most difficult technological feat ever attempted by the human race, a task so intractable that it had eluded fusioneers worldwide for eighty years—and that they do it in six months with a machine that might not be capable of it. With a loose saboteur thrown in for good measure.

The shouts abated, only to be replaced by angry accusations that Moravec had planned this from the moment he, she or it joined the consortium. “We’ve been set up!” one voice cried louder than the rest. Truer than you imagine, Machuzak nodded, truer than you imagine. Toshi glanced at his neighbor in a forlorn way. “It is truly impossible, Nathaniel,” his expression said before he cast his gaze to the floor.

Garrett remained on stage as Leonard struggled to his feet. “Friends,” he said with difficulty, above the noise. “We have no choice. Can we do it?”

“No!” was the unanimous reply.

“Can we do it?”

Leonard’s valiant exhortations were drowned out and a general strike appeared to be in the making as the sick director looked on despairingly. To Nathaniel’s amazement, Krieg-Zuber himself suddenly appeared on the big screen, larger than life. Nat’s first thought was that he’d been resurrected; only belatedly did he realize that Cyrus the Great must have taped the bit twenty-four hours ago at the ceremony. “Monsieurs et mesdames,” Zuber was saying with his practiced smile to a circle of journalists. “Our success will be a significant moment in the history of mankind. Failure is not an option.”

The ploy backfired, and as Garrett announced a meeting of the division heads for 11:00 a.m. at the ASSET conference room, the rumble of disbelief welled up again and the crowd stormed out without waiting. In the lobby Toshi turned again to Nathaniel. You always listened when Toshi spoke, but this time he said something other than what Machuzak had read in his face. “So, Nathaniel, it seems that our kairos is suddenly at hand, the moment of grace and opportunity. May we use it well.”

“Kairos—we should all remember that,” an administrator said, exiting the auditorium.

More like a perfect storm, Machuzak was thinking as Slava passed by. “Maybe we should all take our heads out of our asses,” the Russian quipped loudly enough for everyone to hear and continued on his way. Machuzak slowly made his way upstairs to the ASSET conference room.