OPERATIONS
32 NOBODY HERE BUT US ROBOTS
Until the first decade of the new century, the great wreck and the debris surrounding it had remained virtually unchanged, though not untouched. Now, as 2010 approached, it was a hive of activity — or, rather, two hives, a thousand meters apart.
The framework of scaffolding around the bow section was almost complete, and the Mole had successfully laid twenty-five of the massive straps under the hull; there were only five to go. Most of the mud that had piled up around the prow when it drove into the seabed had been blasted away by powerful water jets, and the huge anchors were no longer half buried in silt.
More than twenty thousand tons of buoyancy had already been provided by as many cubic meters of packaged microspheres, strategically placed around the framework, and at the few places inside the wreck where the structure could safely take the strain. But Titanic had not stirred from her resting place — nor was she supposed to. Another ten thousand tons of lift would be needed to get her out of the mud, and to start her on the long climb to the surface.
As for the shattered stern — that had already disappeared inside a slowly accreting block of ice. The media were fond of quoting Hardy’s ‘In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too’ — even though the poet could never have imagined this application of his words.
The penultimate verse was also quoted widely, and equally out of context. Both the Parkinson and Nippon-Turner consortia were rather tired of being told that
They were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event
They hoped that it would be ‘august’ — but not, if they could possibly help it, coincident.
Virtually all the work on both portions of the wreck had been carried out by remote control from the surface; only in critical cases were human beings actually required on the site. During the past decade, underwater robot technology had been pushed far beyond even the remarkable achievements of the previous century’s offshore oil operations. The payoff would be enormous — although, as Rupert Parkinson often wryly remarked, most of it would go to other people.
There had, of course, been problems, mishaps — even accidents, though none involving loss of life. During one severe winter storm, Explorer had been forced to abandon station, much to the disgust of her captain, who considered this a professional insult. His vomitous passengers did not altogether appreciate his point of view.
Even this display of North Atlantic ferocity, however, had not interrupted operations on the stern. Two hundred meters down, the demobilized nuclear submarines, now rechristened, after a pioneer oceanographer and a famous shipbuilder, Matthew Fontaine Maury and Peter the Great, were scarcely aware of the storm. Their reactors continued steadily pouring megawatt upon megawatt of low-voltage current down to the seabed — creating a rising column of warm water in the process, as heat was pumped out of the wreck.
This artificial upwelling had produced an unexpected bonus, by bringing to the surface nutrients that would otherwise have been trapped on the seabed. The resulting plankton bloom was much appreciated by the local fish population, and the last cod harvest had been a record one. The government of Newfoundland had formally requested the submarines to remain on station, even when they had fulfilled their contract with Nippon-Turner.
Quite apart from all this activity off the Grand Banks, a great deal of money and effort was being expended thousands of kilometers away. Down in Florida, not far from the launchpads that had seen men leave for the Moon — and were now seeing them prepare to go to Mars — dredging and construction for the Titanic Underwater Museum was well under way. And on the other side of the globe, Tokyo-on-Sea was preparing an even more elaborate display, with transparent viewing corridors for visitors and, of course, continuous performances of what was hoped would be a truly spectacular movie.
Vast sums of money were also being gambled elsewhere — especially in the land once more called Russia. Thanks to Peter the Great, share dealings in Titanic spinoff companies were very popular on the Moscow Stock Exchange.
33 SOLAR MAX
‘Another of my monomanias,’ said Franz Zwicker, ‘is the sunspot cycle. Especially the current one.’
‘What’s particular about it?’ asked Bradley, as they walked down to the lab together.
‘First of all, it will peak in — you guessed it! — 2012. It’s already way past the 1990 maximum, and getting close to the 2001 record.’
‘So?’
‘Well, between you and me, I’m scared. So many cranks have tried to correlate events with the eleven-year cycle — which isn’t always eleven years anyway! — that sunspot counting sometimes gets classed with astrology. But there’s no doubt that the Sun influences practically everything on Earth. I’m sure it’s responsible for the weird weather we’ve been having during the last quarter century. To some extent, anyway; we can’t put all the blame on the human race, much as Bluepeace and Company would like to.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be on their side!’
‘Only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The rest of the week I keep a wary eye on Mother Nature. And the weather patterns aren’t the only abnormality. Seismic activity seems to be increasing. Look at California. Why do people still build houses in San Francisco? Wasn’t 2002 bad enough? And we’re still waiting for the Big One. . . .’
Jason felt privileged to share the scientist’s thoughts; the two men, so different in background and character, had grown to respect each other.
‘And there’s something else, that occasionally gives me nightmares. Deep-water blowouts — perhaps triggered by earthquakes. Or even by man.’
‘I’ve known several. A big one in ’98, in the Louisiana Field. Wrote off a whole rig.’
‘Oh, that was just a mild burp! I’m talking about the real thing — like that crater the Shell Oil scientists found two kilometers down in the Gulf, back in the eighties. Imagine the explosion that caused that — three million tons of seabed scooped out! Equivalent to a good-sized atomic bomb.’
‘And you think that could happen again?’
‘I know it will — but not when and where. I keep warning the people up at Hibernia that they’re tickling the dragon’s tail. If Tommy Gold is right — and he was right about neutron stars, even if he struck out on moondust and the Steady State! — we’ve barely scratched the Earth’s crust. Everything we’ve tapped so far is just minor leakage from the real hydrocarbon reservoirs, ten or more kilometers down.’
‘Some leak! It’s been running our civilization for the last couple of centuries.’
‘Did you say running — or ruining? Well, here’s your prize pupil. How’s class going?’
J.J. lay in a transporter cradle, very much a fish out of water. It was attached to a bank of computers by what seemed to Bradley to be an absurdly thin cable. Having grown up with copper wiring, he had never become quite accustomed to the fiber-optic revolution.
Nothing seemed to be happening; the technician in charge hastily concealed the microbook she was viewing, and quickly scanned the monitor display.
‘Everything fine, Doctor,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Just verifying the expert system databases.’
That’s part of me, thought Jason. He had spent hours in dive simulators, while computer programmers tried to codify and record his hard-won skills — the very essence of veteran ocean engineer J. Bradley. He was beginning to feel more and more that, at least in a psychological sense, J.J. was becoming a surrogate son.
That feeling became strongest when they were engaged in a direct conversation. It was an old joke in the trade that divers had a vocabulary of only a couple of hundred words — which was all they needed for their work. J.J. had enough artificial intelligence to exceed this by a comfortable margin.
The lab had hoped to surprise Jason by using his voice as a template for J.J.’s speech synthesizer, but his reaction had been disappointing. The pranksters had forgotten that few people can recognize their own recorded voice, especially if it is uttering sentences that they have never spoken themselves. Jason had not caught on until he had noticed the grinning faces around him.
‘Any reason, Anne, why we can’t start the wet run on schedule?’ Zwicker asked.
‘No, Doctor. The emergency recall algorithm still doesn’t seem to be working properly, but of course we won’t need it for the tests.’
Although the sound transducers were not designed to function in air, Jason could not resist a few words with Junior.
‘Hello, J.J. Can you hear me?’
‘I can hear you.’
The words were badly distorted, but quite recognizable. Underwater, the speech quality would be much better.
‘Do you recognize me?’
There was a long silence. Then J.J. replied.
‘Question not understood.’