Part 11 (1/2)
Wormhole Base, Northern Greenland The ice was a creaking, s.h.i.+fting presence. Dylan didn't like to dwell on the audible reminders that a substance so hard could be so dynamic that it would slowly fill any tunnel bored through it, given time.
”Was this part of the American base?” Kubota asked.
The businessman from somewhere in Asia-the name sounded j.a.panese to Dylan, but he hadn't inquired-was casting eager looks at the mechanical debris mixed in with the icy rubble left along the foot of the newly carved wall. Dylan hurried him along and opted for enough of an explanation to keep him happy.
”In a sense, yes. The Americans were thought to have cleaned out all of Project Iceworm's stuff when they left, back in 1966, but we're still finding their sc.r.a.ps. Looks like they just didn't bother dragging out various pieces of broken-down machinery or equipment. We've also come across furniture and remnants of the theater. Or perhaps it was the church. Everything got trapped inside the ice sheet when it closed in.”
”So then, this tunnel isn't one of the original diggings?”
”No.”
”Did you find any missiles?”
Dylan glanced at Kubota without managing to spot the twinkle in his eye that had to be there.
”No,” he said curtly. ”And the nuclear reactor was decommissioned and removed.”
”Good. So then, this is a safe place.”
Maybe he was radiation-shy. Given the effects of the Taiwan nuclear exchange on the entire region he came from, that wouldn't be surprising.
”The safest,” Dylan confirmed. ”Part of the Consortium's cover here is the Extragalactic Neutrino Observatory. The deep ice is clean enough for Cerenkov radiation to s.h.i.+ne through quite a large volume. Not as good as in Antarctica, but at least we're looking in the opposite direction. The detectors point down, of course, to use the Earth itself as a gigantic s.h.i.+eld and filter, but they're also protected to some extent by the bulk of the ice over them. We're not as far down, with only ninety meters of ice above us, but it's still a nicely rad-free environment.”
”A one-time creation.”
”The whole point,” Dylan agreed.
The Consortium offered visitors with a need for utmost confidentiality the most private facilities ever built. Every meeting room was freshly dug out of millennia-old ice. The only manufactured objects brought in-chairs, tables, infrared lamps-were so basic as to be easily searched for even nanotech bugs. n.o.body else had used a given room before and n.o.body else would afterward.
This time, the Consortium itself had called the meeting. Secrecy would be absolute. Dylan had heard that all of the furniture would be made of particle board produced on the premises with lumber harvested from a submerged forest in an African lake. The whole idea being that no hidden transmitter or recorder could have been included decades ago within the trunks of a soon-to-be-drowned grove, or would have survived the chipping process ... Dylan could think of a few flaws with this a.s.sumption, but as long as it served its purpose of setting suspicious minds at ease, he wouldn't quibble.
”Here we are,” he said.
Kubota went in first and Dylan followed, finding his way to the side of Brian McGuire. As head manager of the local Consortium office, McGuire would chair the meeting. As the brightest of the bright young interns, Dylan would supply specifics if required.
The room was large and freezing cold until one entered the enchanted ring of infrared lamps.
The tables were set in a hollow square, with enough seating for twenty people: an eclectic mix of owners, executives, and highly trusted a.s.sistants.
”No names,” McGuire announced in a booming voice. ”Names are too easy to remember. Faces just slip away. Or change.”
Not that individual names really mattered. The only names that counted were displayed on yellow cardboard squares and they identified the companies or industrial concerns represented by the people around the table.
”Notes?” asked a woman with a slight Scandinavian accent.
”You may use papers or internal electronics. If you managed to sneak in any external electronics, my congratulations to your technical staff, but you'll still have to sneak them out and their contents will have to survive a low-level electromagnetic pulse.”
The woman nodded. McGuire added: ”At the end of the meeting, I will offer a road map, boiled down to six main points. We worded them to be easy to memorize. In many instances, details will come later. We are here to ask and to answer questions. If the answers aren't satisfactory, we won't go forward. But I truly believe that we are standing on the ground floor of something big.”
Heads nodded. The Consortium had already proved it could place big bets when it had built up Qaqortoq from a sleepy fis.h.i.+ng village into a major port for container s.h.i.+ps coming or going from Asia, Europe, or North America, and needing to swap containers before heading to their ultimate destination. In the broader context, Wormhole Base was a side-project catering to a few thousand people a year though it also served to demonstrate the Consortium's commitment to Greenland. But McGuire was willing to go slow and build his case first.
”Global warming is the new industrial frontier. Mitigation and adaptation are already huge, and are going to become even huger. We'll have to beat back deserts, move cities to higher ground, and re-create whole new species.”
”I thought the Loaves and Fishes group was cornering the market for new heat-tolerant crops and pollution-resistant fish,” said an older man whose spot at the table bore the name of a well-known Canadian nanotech company.
”Perhaps, but they're not turning a profit,” Dylan objected.
McGuire threw him a menacing look, but his voice remained smooth and practiced as he ignored the double interruption.
”Everybody here has a finger in the pie, and a stake in the result, but we want more. Greenland is the first new piece of prime real estate completely up for grabs since humans arrived in North America-unless that first wave actually beat the one that went to Australia.”
”Rather barren real estate.”
”It'll get better.”
”And not entirely deserted.”
”The current population is just hanging off the edges of the landma.s.s, so it will only be a factor if we let it. Our new facilities have attracted so many immigrants that they're swamping the locals. One way or another, we don't expect the Nuuk government to be a worry.”
The man identified as Toluca nodded, apparently willing to concede the point. His own face bore a distant family resemblance to that of the Greenland Inuit.
”As part of your invitation, we included a topographic map of Greenland without the ice sheet,” McGuire added. ”It must have struck you, looking at the map, that there are only a few major glacial outlets. Plug them up and the Greenland ice sheet will no longer contribute anything to sea level rise.”
There were blank looks all around the table. Preventing sea level rise was not an obvious source of profits. Saving the world would have to yield dividends to catch this group's attention.
”Where will the water go?”
”Nowhere. It'll stay where it is. Part of Greenland lies below sea level. Up to three hundred meters. The central part of the continent can easily contain a major inland sea.”
”Isn't the crust depressed under the weight of all that ice? Won't it rebound?”
The woman from Scandinavia probably knew something about post-glacial rebound. Dylan looked expectantly at McGuire, but the Consortium manager did not need to consult his a.s.sistant.
”Come on, think! If the water is contained when the ice melts, it won't go anywhere. The overburden remains nearly the same. The melt.w.a.ter will be quite sufficient to prevent isostatic rebound.”
The woman did not yield as easily as Toluca and probed further.
”I did look at the map. The central ice sheet is over three kilometers high; most of the surrounding mountains are no more than hills. The peaks reach up to two kilometers on the eastern coast, but most of the western hills are only half a kilometer high. Even if you could turn most of central Greenland into an enclosed basin, something like half the ice is still going to melt and add to sea level rise.”
”Half is better than none. And the half flowing out can be turned to good use.”
”Such as?”
”No mean bonus. If you plug the outlets and water rises behind the walls, we will be able to use some of it to power hydroelectric plants.”
Dylan hid a smile as backs straightened, chair legs sc.r.a.ped along the roughened ice of the floor, and gazes fastened on McGurie.
”White coal,” Kubota said, his eyes narrowing.
”Enough to power whole new cities, yes.”