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put on hold, to predictable protests.
As the project became more real, it was provoking sincere po-
litical anger. In a way Siobhan welcomed that; it meant that more
than a year after Alvarez s Christmas announcement, the  phony
war was coming to an end, and people were starting to believe
enough in the sunstorm to care what was being done about it. Of
course there were technical problems to solve; what they were at-
tempting had never been done before. But Siobhan knew that if
she allowed a hint of doubt to seep out of her management struc-
ture, it would soon erode the fragile political consensus behind the
project an infrastructure every bit as essential to the shield as the
glass struts and booms being shipped up from the Moon.
Siobhan massaged her temples.  So we find another way to do
it. What can we change?
Rose ticked points off on her strong fingers.  You can t change
the basic forces involved. You can t change the gravity fields of sun
or Earth, or the pressure per square centimeter of sunlight. You
can t shrink the shield. If it was transparent, sunlight would pass
straight through the shield without troubling it, of course. She
smiled.  But then there would be no point in building it in the first
place, would there?
 There must be something, damn it, Siobhan snapped.
She looked around at the softscreens that lined the walls of the
room. The faces that peered back at her, her senior project man-
agers, were projected from various corners of the Earth, the Moon,
and L1 itself. The expressions of Bud and Mikhail Martynov as al-
ways radiated sympathy and support. Rose was wearing her usual
it-can t-be-done scowl. Many of the others were more reserved.
Some may actually have been grateful to Rose and her showstop-
pers, as she gave them something to hide their own issues behind.
They just didn t get it, Siobhan thought. There was a failure of
imagination, even among her people, some of the smartest engi-
neers and technologists around, who were closer to the project than
anybody else. They weren t just building a bridge here, or just flying
to Mars; this wasn t just another project, another line on a curricu-
1 4 4 " C L A R K E & B A X T E R
lum vitae. This was the future of humanity they were dealing with.
If they fouled up, whatever the cause, there would be no tomorrow
in which to hand out blame: there would be no careers to wreck, no
new directions to seek. Siobhan ought to welcome Rose s bluntness,
she thought; at least from her you got the straight skinny, whatever
the consequences.
 I m not going to give you a pep talk, she said.  Let me just re-
mind you what President Alvarez said. Failure is not an option. It
still isn t. We are going to work on this until our foreheads bleed,
and we are going to find solutions to both these problems of ours
today, come what may.
Bud murmured,  We re with you, Siobhan.
 I hope that s true. She stood, pushing back her chair. She said
to Toby,  I need a break.
 I don t blame you. Just a reminder your ten o clock is out-
side.
Siobhan glanced at a softscreen diary page.  Lieutenant Dutt?
The soldier who had, it seemed, spent more than a year trying to
get access to Siobhan, with grave news she wouldn t divulge to any-
body else, and had finally drifted to the top of the in-tray. More
problems. But at least different problems.
She stretched, trying to dissipate the ache in her upper neck.  If
anybody cares I ll be back in thirty minutes.
22: Turning Point
Lieutenant Bisesa Dutt, British Army, was waiting for Siobhan in
the City of London Rooms. She was drinking coffee and studying
her phone.
As Siobhan crossed the room she was distracted by a peculiar
shadow. Looking out the window, she glimpsed a gaunt frame-
work rising beyond the rooftops of London: it was the skeleton of
what would become the London Dome, the city s own effort to pro-
tect itself from the sunstorm. It was already the mightiest construc-
tion project in London s long history, although predictably it was
dwarfed by still mightier shelters being raised over New York, Dal-
las, and Los Angeles.
From the beginning they had always known, just as Alvarez
had announced, that the shield was not going to save the Earth
from one hundred percent of the sun s rage, even assuming it got
built at all. Some of it was going to get through but the shield
would give humanity a fighting chance, a chance that had to be
taken. The trouble was that nobody knew how much pain the
world below, and cities like London, would have to absorb. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]