BLIGHT ON THE BEANSTALK
by Guy Stewart
By the time they caught up with the Beanstalk, it was dark.
Rashida Dewidar and Emerald Marcillon made their way from the hydrofoil dock to the
moving space elevator’s moving launch pad on the moving sidewalk. Rashida said,
“Don’t be scared. We’re perfectly safe.”
Emerald hunched over her ipik, pretending to be terrified. It
wasn’t like she’d never left the Yucatan Peninsula before! By the time they
reached the launch point – where the Beanstalk connected to the platform, she’d
memorized the car’s ten-story floorplan off the public website. She’d grabbed
the link at the Honolulu library while pretending to update her vibes. It had
been a risky move. If Rashida had decided to scan it, she’d have known, but
Emerald had no intention of being micromanaged.
Lit by ground spotlights
slicing into the night sky, the space elevator car wrapped around the single
crystal graphene cable of the space elevator. The ten story tall hexagon was
over a hundred meters across, and a four-meter wide central Core held the wheels
and motors that would lift it into space. Brightly lit windows on the bottom
and top floors were command decks, above and below freight decks, and two decks
in the middle, dimly lit at night so passengers could see out as the car
climbed into space . The base was wrapped once with the boarding ramp.
Everyone entered
at the Down Command level. Rashida had taken Emerald’s hand as they walked up
the boarding ramp. She’d been tempted to shake it off, but stoically endured
the uncomfortable contact to keep Rashida from trying to hold on harder.
Emerald stopped in the middle of the ramp and looked up, leaning back until she
started to fall back before Rashida laughed and caught her.
Rashida said, “I
did that the first time I ever went up.” She set Emerald upright. “Only I
didn’t have anyone to catch me.” She tugged Emerald back into motion and they
continued up the ramp, Emerald edging a bit farther ahead every few steps.
It was
spectacular, but that hadn’t been the reason she stared up the tower into
infinity. When she figured Rashida was suspicious, she turned and smiled over
her shoulder and said, “Can we get a seat by the window for the launch?”
Rashida laughed
and said, “Let me check our tickets.”
As Rashida let go
of Emerald and took out her own ipik, Emerald dropped her necklace, gasped, and
bent over to pick it up. An instant later, she was scurrying on all fours, dodging
through moving legs. Passing over the threshold into the car, she turned across
the traffic and scooted around the wall of the Core until she came to the first
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY hatch she’d seen on the car’s floor plan.
“Emerald!”
Rashida shouted.
From near the
floor, Emerald looked over her shoulder to see Rashida’s hands. She started to
stand then dropped back down when Rashida’s hands jerked off the floor.
She muttered, “Smarter
than I expected.”
Emerald
crab-walked past the second Core panel. There weren’t as many people now and
she got up and sprinted in a crouch until she reached the third panel, jamming
her ipik into a red-ringed key slot. The door open instantly. She slipped in,
then leaned against it to close it, cutting off the low hum of people pre-boarding.
It also cut off Rashida, who shouted, “When I get my hands on you...”
And airlock door
below swung open, bright light flooding into the Core. A man looked up, pulled
back in and said, “Everything clear above. We can dog the hatches and evacuate
the bays for the trip up.” The door slammed closed, sealing with a hiss. The rest
of the locks sealed in the Core shut suddenly.
Trying not to
panic, Emerald knew nothing on the Net said anything about sucking the air out
of the Core! The entire car jerked suddenly, then started to move up, swaying, giant
wheels inside the Core driving them up the ribbon of carbon nanotubules of the
Beanstalk itself. Giant sails made of wafter-thin solar cell, orbiting at the
top, fed electricity into the motors driving the wheels, eventually, to carry
them up at six hundred kilometers per hour.
Emerald stepped onto
a ladder rung not moving until her breathing steadied. With her ipik sealed in
a pocket, she wiped one hand at a time dry, turned around and started to climb.
She’d counted
past three levels when blue lights flooded the Core.
Rashida’s voice
boomed , “I know you’re in there, Emerald! Come out or else!”
Emerald snorted.
That meant there were no cameras in the Core. She started climbing again. The
lights suddenly turned red.
“The Core will be
flooded with fentanyl gas. It’s a standard procedure to clear out rats
hiding in the Core.” Far below, a white cloud appeared. It stayed at the bottom
until fans started up.
Emerald climbed
desperately. She slipped, her foot dangling free for an instant.
She hooked her
foot back onto the ladder, scrambling to a blaze-orange, circular hatch; DANGER!
painted on it in white. She almost missed the pass key slot. It wasn’t red this
time. She slid the key in.
She held her
breath.
The
hatch split into ten slices, pulling back into the rim. She dragged herself up
into a circular room. Six two-and-a-half meter long tubes rayed out from it. Each
had a thin, grey cushion, . Monitors, panels, openings, windows, tubing, vents,
and lab stations closed a crew person in, and ended in a transparent bubble.
She crawled on her elbows to the end, hoping she wouldn’t set off alarms on the
command deck. She searched for the key slot – red or not. The fentanyl
gas would be rising. Soft thuds far below told her it was working.
She slid her feet to the Core, rolling to search for the slot, but
saw nothing. Her pulse roared in her ears. She gulped air and held her breath
just as she saw it and jammed the key in. She hoped it would shut down the
alarm without telling the crew where she was.
Nothing happened.
Suddenly the pie-slice door below the tubes slammed closed. She let out a
sigh of relief and rolled over, looking up along the one hundred
thousand-kilometer ribbon. The Beanstalk slid by fast and silent. The sky ahead
was a deep, midnight blue and sharp white pinpoints of stars that no longer
twinkled. It wasn’t even on Earth.
It wasn’t the night
sky over the Yucatan Peninsula. Emerald couldn’t stop the memory. She’d stayed
on the beach, watching the stars for three days, hiding under brush whenever
she heard the knife-footed robot searching for her or even other people.
She’d have been sunburned
like a tourist if she hadn’t lived there most of her life. She recognized Rashida
finally, and came out from hiding. The rest of the adults from the station had stood
beside her until they could get her on a flight to Hawaii. In hospital, she’d
imagine hearing the sound of the robot’s knife feet stabbing into sand; and relived
its attack on her parents in her nightmares.
As the Elevator
raced to orbit at nearly seven hundred kilometers per hour, she left that sound
– and that life – behind. She lifted her
head, hoping she could catch a glimpse of the Space Station that anchored the
Elevator in orbit.
Scowling, she
said, “What’s that?” A brown, diseased smear lay across the Beanstalk, like mold
or an infection. A blight on the Beanstalk. She lifted her ipik level with her
face, snapped a picture, and sent it to the Bridge icon.
Something was
horribly wrong and they’d reach it in moments. She had to talk to someone. And
what if she was wrong? She’d never been in space before. What did she know
about what was “wrong” and what was “normal”?
But the car wasn’t slowing down and there was
clearly something on the ribbon. Emerald took a deep breath, then plugged into
a computer access portal on the wall.
A woman’s voice blared
from a speaker next to her head, “Identify yourself!”
Emerald jerked
her head up against the panels above. “Ouch! What?”
There was a pause
and the voice sounded distant when they said, “You sound like a little girl!”
“I’m twelve and a
half!”
“You’re still…”
Another woman
interrupted her, “What are you doing in a restricted access maintenance tube?”
Emerald said, “I didn’t
know it was restricted! But that’s not important…”
“I think it’s
very important that I find out how a little girl got into a restricted
maintenance tube on the Space Elevator. Would you like to tell me now or should
I fill the tube with sleeping gas and send someone up there to drag you out?”
“No! Don’t!
There’s something on the Beanstalk! I can see it from the bubble window. It’s
brown; maybe organic! I sent you an image a minute ago.”
“How do you think
I found you?” they said. They covered their microphone, but Emerald still heard,
“...forward elevator cameras...” Another pause and the voice came back on
clearly, “So, who exactly are you, little girl in a restricted access space?”
Emerald bit her
upper lip, then said, “Emerald.”
“Does Emerald
have a last name?”
“Not right now.”
“Smart...” The
microphone was muffled again. The speaker clicked and went silent. Scooting
back to the porthole, Emerald rubbed her forehead. She’d read in the file that
there was no way to halt the passenger car halfway to the space station. She
was also pretty sure, based on what Dad had said about Great-Aunt Ruby, that
she wouldn’t want to shove the family name into a bad light.
The passenger car
shuddered suddenly. The steady light started flashing red, and a pulsing hoot
of the emergency klaxon echoed in the Core. The voice spoke over the noise,
“This is an emergency. A robot has been dispatched ahead of the elevator to
clear the Beanstalk of an unidentified organic deposit. It will be necessary to
close all observation ports during this time, as high intensity ultraviolet
lasers are being deployed. Return to your assigned seats and strap down. This
is an emergency.”
A softer voice
said, “Emerald, are you Vice-captain Marcillon’s great-niece?”
Crap. Caught
red-handed. She took a deep breath and said, “My name is Emerald Anastasia Nhia
Okon Marcillon.”
“Your
great-aunt’s middle name?”
Emerald scowled,
then snapped, “Private information.”
“My finger is
hovering over the sleep-gas release. It should make you sleep for a few hours.
Maybe days. Did I mention that most people come out of being sleep-gassed
throwing up?”
“That’s
blackmail!” Saying Ruby’s middle name out loud was going to get her in bigger
trouble than getting caught.
“My finger’s
getting itchy,” said the voice.
She bit her upper
lip, considered getting sleep-gassed, then said, “Fine. Use it at your own
risk.”
“What?”
“Do you want to
know it or not?”
Short pause, “Yes.”
“Great-Aunt
Ruby’s middle name is Stellaluna.”
A loud guffaw was
abruptly cut off as the voice said, “Oh, yeah! I will get so much mileage out
of this!” Head still tilted uncomfortably, she saw twin puffs of vapor burst over
the ribbon. Emerald sighed. She was gonna be in so much trouble when she saw
her great-aunt. “Security is on its way to pick you up. They have orders to
stun you.”
“You said…” The
voice cut off and Emerald was suddenly sure she’d made a bad deal.
Fifteen minutes
later, two people grabbed her ankles and pulled her out. They were fully
armored soldiers with silvered faceplates and synthetic voices that made them
sound like robots. “Hands up, young lady. You are officially secured with Solar Explorer security.”
They lowered her
to a ledge in the Core two levels farther down, then opened an airlock, marched
her forward and followed. Now Emerald walked between them. She was in handcuffs
again. She kept her head down and managed to shake the sleeves of her dark blue
coverall so they concealed the plastic loops.
Rashida met them
at the foot of the lift into the command level. She said loudly, “If your
great-aunt yells at me for handcuffing you, I’m leaving.”
“Great-Aunt Ruby
is here?”
“No. She’s up
above and she’s busy. SOLAREX launches in six days. She doesn’t have time for
you.” Rashida looked away. “Sorry, that’s not…”
“I know what you
meant,” Emerald said with more annoyance than she intended. Rashida’s eyes
narrowed. Emerald said, “You’re taking me to her?”
Rashida nodded.
“After you talk with the elevator-car pilot.”
That was a short
conversation that ended with the pilot glaring at Rashida. She
said, “Put a leash on your kid and stay out of
my hair for the rest of the trip.” She’d paused, “But tell your kid, ‘thank you’.
The mold patch would have stopped us cold for hours. Tell her that if she wants
to apply to work on the elevator crew in twelve years, to give me a call.”
Security removed
the handcuffs, Rashida took Emerald’s elbow and led her to the lift where they
descended six levels. “What are we looking for?”
Rashida said, “Nothing.”
“Evidence that
supports Mom and Dad’s Shattered Spheres theory?”
Rashida didn’t
reply, but gripped Emerald’s arm harder as the lift door opened. “Let’s go.”
Rashida guided Emerald to a door that slid open, releasing her, and said, “You’re
in Detention. When I open it next time, I’ll have a couple of guards with me.”
The door closed and Emerald sat down.
Hours later, the
door opened again, but it was only a steward with a meal tray. Behind him was a
SOLAREX security guard. Emerald sighed. They’d taken her ipik, and when she
took out her opad and tried to connect with the Internet, she was blocked.
After a few tries, the ’pad shut off and she couldn’t turn it back on. She
spoke to the empty room and said, “Can you at least give me a view screen?” Silence,
so she laid down, slept, used the bathroom, and sometime later, a steward
arrived with breakfast.
Emerald ate
slowly, pushed her dishes into a slot where they disappeared. She’d drifted off
again when the monotonous hum of the motors lifting the Beanstalk car into
space changed. It got deeper and deeper, then stopped altogether. There were a
series of loud bangs, then her door opened again.
Rashida said,
“We’re unloading you at the freight doors. I’ll walk you to a shuttle that will
take us over to SOLAREX where I’ll turn you over to Ship Security.”
Emerald swallowed
hard. Maybe she had pushed her too far. The list of people she trusted was
nearly zero. She was Rashida’s assignment; but they hadn’t hated each other at
Chicxulub, either. Maybe they could be…
The door opened,
and they joined the rest of the passengers leaving the elevator, passed through
a blank tunnel and stepped into an immense room with an entirely transparent
wall that looked down on Earth and one that looked into deep space.
Rashida bowed and
swept her arm toward a bright light in the distance.
Emerald walked
forward and pressed her thumb on it. Something in the glass acted like a
telescope, zooming in on what looked like a pair of small mismatched asteroids.
Rashida said, “That’s
asteroid 471 Toutatis. Also known as SOLAR EXPLORER.”
