Killing Time by Caleb Carr Page B

hours, Dr.
Wolfe," Tressalian said. "How would you feel about coffee and dessert
at seventy thousand feet?"
    I hadn't noticed, but during
dinner the ship had inclined its angle of progress, and in just a few seconds
the rippling image of the nearly full moon became visible through the surface
of the ocean. Maintaining its speed, the vessel rushed up out of the water and
into the open air, its superconductive electromagnetic generators propelling it
into the heavens at a fantastic rate that did not even rattle the china on the
table.
    Colonel Slayton moved quietly
toward the stairs and headed up to the control level with calm purpose.
"There's no need to contact the island, Colonel," Tressalian called
after him. "I've already double-checked the apparatus. We're set for
dawn."
    "Sorry, Malcolm,"
Slayton answered, continuing his climb. "The military penchant for
redundancy dies hard."
    Tressalian laughed quietly in my
direction. "The Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan," he explained,
"have refused to heed our warnings about the American strike, so we'll
have to force them to leave. They've got their women and children down in those
tunnels with them, and that's not blood I particularly want on my hands."
    "But how can you force them
to go?" I asked.
    "Well—I could tell
you, Doctor," Tressalian said as he began to drag his body away from the
transparent hull. "But I think it'll be far more effective if you
observe."
     
CHAPTER 15
     
    Once we'd leveled off in the
thin, cold stratospheric air, Tressalian led a slow procession up to the
observation dome atop the nose of the ship. As we stopped by the guidance
center on the middle level to pick up his wheelchair, I saw and heard the
consoles of monitors blinking and humming under Colonel Slayton's direction,
and noted that my earlier amazement at the fantastic advances embodied in the
ship was beginning to fade. I found myself marveling at how quickly the human
mind can accept and become adjusted to technological leaps—although of course,
Tarbell's vodka and Larissa's continued and ever-more-pointed physical
overtures were going a long way, on this particular night, toward assisting my
own acclimation. But ultimately it was a testament to the seductive power of
technology, a power that my host—who refused to explain any further about the
Afghanistan business until we got there—expounded on as he sat in his
wheelchair in the observation dome:
    "While the average citizen,
Doctor, was engaged in this mass love affair with information technology—and
while the companies that produced that technology happily painted themselves as
the democratizing agents of a new order—real economic and informational power,
far from being decentralized, became concentrated in an ever-decreasing number
of megacorporations, companies that determined not only what information was purveyed
but which technologies were developed to receive and monitor it. And while in
your own country there was at least a struggle early on for control over this
mightiest and most pervasive public influence in history, the crash of '07 put
an end to the fight. In a collapsing world, Washington had no one to turn to
for help except my father and his ilk. And they offered it, to be sure—but only
for a price."
    "To put it simply,"
Colonel Slayton said as he rejoined us from the control level, "they purchased the government."
    Tressalian smiled at him, then
turned back to me. "The colonel has a gift for brevity that is sometimes
mistaken for detachment. But remember that no one experienced the practical
effects of what we're talking about more than the soldiers of the Taiwan
campaign, who— as you yourself have pointed out, Doctor—unknowingly sacrificed
themselves for a bigger share of the Chinese market. Yes, the information
technocrats, my father among them, purchased the government, and after that
all legislative initiatives and material resources were diverted from
regulatory programs, from environmental and