CHAPTER 13 “Kampala”
Wednesday 31 August 2811
Captain Perry concurred with me that my missing the trip to GEO Station was not a problem. The trip itinerary did not include any formal training and there was a reasonable chance that I would have suffered nausea much of the time anyway.
VACATION! And with Caleb!
Caleb, my crewmates, and I climbed off the shuttle boat from the Tender and boarded the Anchor Ship. He and I were given permission to watch the elevator car ascend up the ribbons.
Although we had our irises scanned on the Tender, we had to repeat the ritual just inside the Anchor ship’s hull. After that, we all followed a young sailor through a maze of steel corridors and stairways that finally opened into a hangar that held the elevator car. We found ourselves at the same level as the passenger pod and a dizzying distance from the hangar floor.
The car looked a lot larger up close. People were already milling about inside the car’s transparent dome. Below us, the side of the car was fully open and packed with pieces for Trillium along with water, fuel, food, medicines, oxygen, and miscellaneous supplies for the stations and for other ships docked at ZERO Station. For the last many months, equipment and materials for the Trillium starship comprised most of the cargo.
We followed the sailor along a catwalk and through a retractable jet-way into the passenger pod. Most of the people were FSA astronauts from the looks of their uniforms. Captain Perry and Sitara went up to three other officers and exchanged hugs. Hvezda, Xingxing, and Danika found their assigned seats and stashed their shoulder bags in the bins underneath.
Time to go exploring! Hvezda offered to be our guide since she had been to GEO Station twice before. She lifted a ribbon from an empty seat, fastened one end around her wrist, and raised the plastic ring secured to the other end of the ribbon. The ring was not a complete circle. “This keeps you from floating away in zero g.” She clicked the ring onto a small rail that bordered the aisle. “Snap ring on rail and use hands on rail to move. Rails go to other seats, to food cabinet, to bathroom, and around circumference where you have view outside.”
Danika piped up, “¿When two people meet going the opposite way on the same rail, what happens? Certainly, they don’t like duke it out.”
“Person going toward bathroom has right-of-way; other takes ring off and holds onto seat, onto rail mount, whatever.”
She led us over to the side of the car where a pair of back-to-back ladders – one blue and one yellow – descended through a hole in the floor. Looking down the shaft I saw that the ladders stopped at a platform about 5 meters below. Just to the side, another pair of ladders descended out of sight. Hvezda explained, “Take blue ladders to Observation Room at bottom of car. Come back up on yellow. Platforms stop people from falling all way to bottom. Of course, at zero g is no bottom or top.”
I turned to Caleb, “M.C. Escher made real!” Xingxing and Danika chuckled at that thought, but Caleb obviously did not understand what I was talking about. I explained, “M.C. Escher was an artist, who among other things, made drawings showing people going up the same stairs that others on the flip side were going down.”
We heard the clang of a closing door below and a klaxon sounded through speakers somewhere. An announcement followed. “Visitors please exit immediately.”
I gave each of my crewmates a quick hug and hurried to the door and across the jetway with Caleb.
We followed signs to the “Elevator Viewing Area” through sterile steel corridors and up flights of stairs until we reached a wide viewing balcony. From there we watched the elevator car lifted by a cable from overhead. Slowly the car’s three runners mated with three of the space ribbons as the car continued to ascend. When it looked ready to go, it stopped, the steel cable disconnected, and the overhead boom with the cable retreated to the side. Several minutes ticked away very slowly. I told Caleb, “They’re going through pre-flight checklists before they start.” It seemed like a sensible thing to say and it may have possibly been true.
A public address system in the viewing area came to life with the sound of an elevator bell and, “Space Elevator. Ground Floor, Planet Earth. Next Floor, GEO Station.” The car began moving very gently up the ribbons with a loud electric whine. When the bottom of the car passed, we could see Hvezda and Danika sitting in chairs above a TransCarb window.
Waving furiously, I shouted, “Good-bye,” although I knew they couldn’t possibly hear through the pressure hull. They waved excitedly back as the car receded upward. Next to us a speedometer displayed 75 km/hr and stayed there but the huge elevator car seemed to be moving far slower. The speedometer crept up slowly past 80 km/hr. Far above, the car now resembled a gelatin medicine capsule.
Looking around, I spied binoculars hanging on hooks by their straps. I let go of Caleb’s hand and fetched two of them. The speedometer moved past 100 km/hr. Through the binoculars, I could see the first of the stabilizing rings that held all nine space ribbons in place.
Allowing elevators to smoothly pass these rings was one of the fascinating challenges with a simple solution I’d read about on my previous visit. Each elevator car rides on three ribbons. Each ribbon lies along a radial: one edge ‘points’ toward the center and the other edge points away. The edge nearer the center has a bit of ribbon at a right angle so that the cross section of the ribbon resembles the capital letter T. The elevator car has driving rollers on both sides of the long portion of the T while the cross portion of the T runs through a slot to keep the rollers in position on the ribbon. The stabilizing ring for each trio of ribbons attaches to the outer edge of the three Ts that protrude from the exterior of the elevator car. That forms one elevator car ‘shaft.’ Each ring is attached to the other two shafts by a spacer to prevent elevator cars from bumping into each other. Here at the bottom of the elevator, the ribbons are pretty thin. They are progressively thicker and stronger as they rise to Zero Station.
The speedometer reached 200 km/hr. Without the binoculars, the car was almost impossible to see. The speedometer passed 300 km/hr and quickly reached 400. Even with the binoculars, the car was a tiny dot in a blue sky with curling wisps of white. The speedometer slowly eased up to 500 km/hr, the cruising speed for the up trip. They were already at the edge of space. There was nothing more for us to see. They will reach GEO Station in exactly three days.
Caleb put the binoculars back on their hooks, picked me up, and we indulged in a lengthy kiss. We then made our way to the cafeteria for ice cream.
We visited the Space Elevator displays and videos for about two hours. Caleb was intrigued and understood a lot of things, but he has no conceptual hooks on which to hang some of the information. And he is almost math-illiterate, more so than even mom. Several times his eyes glazed over as I explained some very cool physics involved in the design and construction of the Beanstalk.
By the time we got back to Bulolombe, it was lightly raining.
08:06 Thursday 1 September 2811
The very next morning we met Terra Lambert and Etienne Saleté, our armed security escorts for a sightseeing trip to Kampala. Ever since security was heightened, none of the starship crew is allowed off base without escort. Captain Perry decided we would be safest with both a female and male escort.
The four of us boarded Tango Papa as rain fell steadily and clouds hid the hilltops. We let the controller do all of the flying to Kampala as visibility was mostly zero. Tango Papa landed gently on top of the Bank of Brazil building, about 500 meters above Kampala. Veiled in thick cloud, the landing pad seemed as though it were on the ground – not perched half a kilometer high on a building. Terra and Etienne were familiar with the sets of elevators, so we quickly reached the sidewalk and headed for the marketplace.
The marketplace is a throwback to ancient times; endlessly noisy and rich in smells, colors, and activity. There are tables and booths and baskets and people as far as we can see. Every time I paused at a booth, people had to crowd past me to continue. Fruit! Easily half of the fruit varieties were new to me.
Caleb turned quickly toward me and handed me something. I shrieked and dropped it. All three of them laughed since it was merely a creepy-looking fruit with spines. I picked it up and threw it back at Caleb.
After squeezing through the marketplace, we found a street pod and rode it to the Kisenye Museum. The woman at the desk recognized me so I spent a minute talking with her and then stood for photos with various museum staff. The museum itself was a bore. Nothing but politics, history, and old dead guys. We were in and out in under half an hour.
We walked for a bit in drizzling rain before picking out a café for lunch. It had old posters for wallpaper, mismatched tables and chairs on a worn linoleum floor, and no menu.
Terra talked with the cook and they eventually settled on a variety of dishes with strange-sounding names that I quickly forgot. While we waited for the food, Caleb and Etienne each had a banana beer, Terra had black tea, and I had a cup of chai masala.
The food came out of the kitchen on old plates with faded designs, but the aromas were wonderful. My favorite was the fish steamed in banana leaves, but the beef with peanut sauce was a close second. I didn’t much care for the goat meat with a sauce made from a fruit called nakati.
Whenever my mouth got to burning with the spices, I had another bite of the ball made from maize flour, ugali, which helped a little. The cook insisted on giving us dessert for free. It was a white cake with a coarse, heavy consistency and frosting made with lots of honey and some kind of puréed red fruit. We were all fully satisfied and stuffed, so after Terra paid with her FSA account, we all chipped in with a generous tip.
Shortly after we exited back out onto the sidewalk, it began to pour. We ducked under the awning of a fabric store and waited. After 5 minutes and no letup in the rainfall, we decided to race up a few doors to a small video theatre – thinking we could stand in the lobby until the deluge passed.
We entered the tiny lobby – the four of us almost filled it – and read the advertising as we shook water off our clothes and heads. I was amazed to see that this tiny business shows technologically advanced holovideos. From the advertising for the current video, I guessed it was a pretty cheap production, but it was about a colony on a distant planet and intriguing for that reason. A glance out the windows revealed that the rain continued unabated and it was getting darker.
“Let’s watch this video,” I suggested. “I doubt it’s so bad that we’d rather drown ourselves outside. It’s just started.”
I paid for the tickets since ISTRI was giving me an allowance. Terra and I used the less-than-sparkling women’s bathroom while Caleb and Etienne went into the men’s bathroom. When we were all ready, we entered the tiny theatre. It was overly warm and stuffy. It had only ten rows of seats and only four other people were sitting there. The holovideo was indeed terrible with silly dialogue, people chasing things, things chasing people, unrealistic leaps and flips by the male lead, and no obvious plot. I leaned up against Caleb’s forearm and closed my eyes.
14:41 Thursday 1 September 2811
Caleb woke up with Terra’s head on his right arm. She was snoring loudly. In the seat next to Terra, Etienne was rubbing his eyes. Estrella’s seat was empty. The screen was dark.
Caleb looked around and timidly called out, “¿Esty?”
Terra abruptly stopped snoring, stretched out her arms, and asked, “¿Etienne, have you seen Estrella?”
“No, I must have fallen asleep. I’ll go look for her.” Etienne managed with difficulty to get to his feet, walked up the aisle, and pushed open the swinging door to the lobby. “Terra!” Etienne shouted.
Caleb and Terra quickly but clumsily joined Etienne in the lobby. Etienne told his e-pad to call Lieutenant Manyedi as he pointed at the floor behind the candy counter. The man that sold them tickets looked up hopefully. He had a cloth towel in his mouth and was tied up with hemp cord.
15:15 Thursday 1 September 2811
In the space elevator car high above Earth and rising at 500 km/hr, Captain Perry responded with, “Yes. Tell her mother right away. And when you confront the kidnappers, do be careful. They have access to high explosives. Right. No. Thank you.” She ended the call, took a deep breath, and went to tell the others.
15:27 Thursday 1 September 2811
Horton Gbrelsniev of Rotterdam News glanced at the email:
We have rescued Estrella Ramirez from the Trillium Project and are now revealing the Creator’s truth to her.
In supplication, His Stewards
“Listen up everybody. Religious nuts calling themselves His Stewards claim they’ve kidnapped that ISTRI kid, Estrella. Dori, get ISTRI on the line.”
15:38 Thursday 1 September 2811
Oh. Must have dozed off. ¿What happened to that crappy movie?
15:55 Thursday 1 September 2811
Hmm. Hard to wake up. Dark. ¿Why am I lying down? “OW!” Damn my hand hurts but I don’t know why it should. Pretty sure I was not attacked by one of those movie monsters. My head refuses to clear.
16:13 Thursday 1 September 2811
OK. Waking up yet again. My head is not so bad now. My right hand hurts. It’s dark. My mouth is dry. “¿May I have some water?”
“Get her some water.”
“You go get it.”
“While you guys sort this out, I’ll get her some water,” said a female voice.
I don’t recognize the voices. I try to sit up, but it makes my hand hurt even more. Neither arm moves very far. I try my legs. They move but only so far. I’m tied down! I’m blindfolded! They’ve taken my I.D. chip out of my hand! Oh fuck. This is not good.
16:15 Thursday 1 September 2811
I shoved the drinking straw out of my mouth with my tongue and said, “Thank you.”
The female voice replied, “It wouldn’t do for you to die on us. People don’t trade much for stiffs.”
16:39 Thursday 1 September 2811
Seated rigidly at his desk, Detective Anatol Ssekandi of the Kampala Peace Department watched his monitor for something, anything, that could be helpful. Then, miraculously, it appeared. He called out to the others in the crowded room, “She’s at a clothing store on Namirembe Road. She used her I.D. chip.” Turning to the dispatcher, “Have the nearest officer check it out with running video. She won’t likely still be there, but the clerk may remember something useful.”
16:44 Thursday 1 September 2811
Well, now I’m dealing with another discomfort. “Hey. ¿Would someone lead me to the bathroom? I’m about to pee on myself.”
The female voice spoke out. “Help me untie her from the bed, you guys. Tie her hands behind her with that hemp cord. And no touchy-feely. I’ll take her myself.”
16:45 Thursday 1 September 2811
Officer Kaguta Bahati’s voice came over the video feed to the Kampala Peace Department. The video was also patched to Lieutenant Manyedi’s office on the ISTRI base. “As you can see, the door to the clothing store is locked and the Closed sign is hung up, but another sign says Open To 20:00.”
Detective Ssekandi ordered, “Break in the door if it looks safe for you. You are in hot pursuit.”
The view swung this way and that as Officer Bahati prepared to destroy the door latch. The view swung away and jogged up and down. A muted ‘thump’ and the view swung back to the door with a bit of smoke drifting off to the right.
“Entering the store. Hearing a pounding near the register.” The view bobbed as the checkout counter grew larger. The view moved to the left and then to the wall and then to the floor where a woman lay with socks stuffed in her mouth. “Kampala Peace Officer Bahati, Miss. Let me help you.”
“Oh thanks, oh thanks,” she said breathily when Bahati removed the socks. “My jaw hurts so bad. They said someone would come for me soon. ¿Did they call you?”
The video quickly oscillated left and right indicating that Bahati shook his head ‘no’ in response.
“There’s a plastic bag and e-pad next to the register they left for the person who unties me. That’s you.” Officer Bahati finished cutting through the hemp cords with his pocketknife and helped the woman to her feet.
The view returned to the register and Bahati picked up the bag. He held it so that the cam got a close view. “Looks like a chip and some blood.” Then Bahati held the bag against the cashier sensor. “Says ‘Estrella Rita Ramirez.’”
17:03 Thursday 1 September 2811
“Bringg-bringg.” Sitara reached for her e-pad. It was a priority one FSA text message. She hoped it was good news about Esty. Instead she read, “You’ve got access to the biggest fucking radio antenna ever and it’s integrated into insane computational power with algorithms designed to tease out weak radio signals. Its transmissions can melt a chocolate bar at 10,000 klicks. Bend the rules. Be bold. Improvise.”
The message was signed, “S. Kajiyama, Executive Office of the Director, Federal Space Agency.”
17:27 Thursday 1 September 2811
In Rotterdam, Horton Gbrelsniev called to Dori, “Here’s a follow-up from His Stewards.
I say to Sky Children with faith in their teachings; I say to Sky Children with pride in their ancient Dreamtime heritage:
The on-going threat of global annihilation can be resolved without a single drop of blood being shed. All of the reasonable leaders and representatives of Earth know this full well.
¿What business do the non-believers have in the home of Guthi-guthi the Most Holy? They have none. The infidels are lying to you and to themselves when they claim to be safeguarding the survival of humankind. All the evidence clearly points to the contrary. Unless stopped, their meddling in the Holy Heavens will soon bring horrible retribution and an end to the Dreaming and thus end the continuity of life.
Your leaders contradict themselves with regard to saving one child who has been swayed by lies. They are playing you for a fool. On the one hand, they are telling you that they are working toward negotiating her rescue, but in reality, they are determined to act with deadly violence. In their ignorance, they will dig their own graves and our graves and the graves of our children for all time to come.
All that is needed is for these heretics to open their hearts and their minds to the reality of the oneness of past and future and the sanctity of the Holy Heavens, Guthi-guthi’s Celestial Home. The only solution is for the leaders to accept the continuity that our Creator blessed us with. They must accept that humankind will be saved, not by desecrating the Heavens, not by defiling the stars, but through faith. Guthi-guthi has provided us with eternal Dreaming and, hence, eternal life. All the leaders need do is to show the respect our Creator deserves and withdraw from our Creator’s Holy Heavens. Only then will humankind avoid self-destruction; only then will our brothers return the child unharmed.
The leaders cannot simply flip a switch and suddenly see the truth in all its glory; it will take time. But they can demonstrate their good intentions by immediately freeing the seven innocent Sky Children wrongly convicted of terrorism in Mexico from the wicked neuro-programming they suffered to make them forget their faith. In return, our acolyte will be kept from harm.
Further, it is essential for her safety that Rotterdam News post this communiqué at once.
Let chips fall where they may in a clothing store.
In supplication,
His Stewards
Dori laughed, “Of course we’ll post the whole garbage heap; we are already topping the net with hits and this guarantees we’ll continue.”
Horton asked no one in particular, “¿Wonder what this means about ‘chips falling where they may in a clothing store?’”
17:49 Thursday 1 September 2811
“Captain Perry,” Lieutenant Manyedi spoke into his e-pad, “the diatribe received by Rotterdam News is authentic. It includes information only the real perps could have known.”
Celeste asked, “¿Can former Goots be deprogrammed back into Goots?”
“Beats me, Captain. Seems unlikely since becoming a Goot is a kind of programming in itself. I’d be surprised.”
“Well, we can’t very well force people who are living more or less normal lives to join a bunch of wackos. The Stewards must know that. ¿Got any ideas, Lieutenant?”
“Sorry. They know we will fail and then they’ll write a communiqué about how sad they are. Sad being forced to kill her.”
“Here’s an idea,” Captain Perry offered. “Let’s try to get those seven to report to the Neuroprogramming Department pretending to submit to de-programming. That way we can buy some time.”
17:53 Thursday 1 September 2811
Mrs. Ramirez and Caleb embraced each other the moment she opened the door to her house.
“I am so sorry, Mrs. Ramirez. They gassed all of us. We could have, should have been more suspicious, more wary, more careful. She’s got to be all right. I feel she’s all right.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Caleb. Come in; most of my neighbors are here too.”
17:53 1 September 2811
Sitara walked up to Captain Perry. “Celeste, somebody in Director Bardot’s office named Kajiyama suggested we use Trillium to find Esty. The girls and I have been running the numbers. It relies on a lot of unknowns, but it could work.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“They took out Estrella’s I.D. chip to prove they really had kidnapped her, but they surely must have left her b-mod in place in her abdomen.”
“¿So?”
“Biomodulators respond with biometrics when they receive a radio pulse with the correct code. Trillium’s active-array radio dish could both send the code to her b-mod and receive its signal.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sitara. The range of a b-mod transmission is just a couple of meters.” Captain Perry held up her right hand to indicate she wanted to consider something. She then told Sitara, “It would be like trying to spot a single blink of a lightening bug in a brightly lit city from the moon.”
“¿But what if we shut off all of the other lights first?”
“We are talking radio frequencies, Sitara. We’d have to shut off every communications transmitter, every electric motor, every electric transformer, every electric everything.”
“Precisely,” answered Sitara with a knowing smile.
00:33 Friday 2 September 2811
Captain Erdman reported, “Trillium’s dish is in position, Celeste. We are bringing the receiver array online. We’ll power the ribbons down when your car is mechanically secured.”
The elevator car had been decelerating for the last 10 minutes. Celeste silently watched the onboard speedometer display. It finally displayed a static zero and the mechanical brakes activated with an audible click to hold the elevator in place.
“OK, Bernard. We are at rest and locked to the ribbons.” The car hung there about 18,000 km above the Earth’s surface; halfway to GEO. Most of the passengers were asleep. Everything was about 20% normal weight including the four Trillium crew members standing around Captain Perry.
“Roger that, Captain. Prepare for power-down.”
00:36 Friday 2 September 2811
Nurse Anna Fatse trudged grumpily from room to room, turning off lights, videos, controllers, and even refrigerators on her floor of Mulago Hospital; everything except patient monitors and respirators. The hospital administrator told her it was a surprise test of the emergency power system, that it was very important, and that it wouldn’t last all night. Tech personnel had already disconnected the hospital from the grid and emergency generators were running in the basement. “¿Why, in all that is good, do we now have to keep powering stuff down?” she said to no one in particular.
00:37 Friday 2 September 2811
Power to the Space Elevator ribbons went to zero and dim battery-powered emergency lights came on automatically in the elevator car. Residual voltage in the ribbons bled down slowly.
00:59 2 September 2811
The few street pods that were in operation in and around Kampala all gave the same announcement. “Very sorry, but in one minute this street pod will come to a safe stop and will power down for a few minutes while the controller receives new diagnostics from Kampala’s Civic Transportation Agency. The door will unlock, and you may exit or you may stay until you reach your destination. Remaining time to shut-down is 42 seconds.”
01:00 Friday 2 September 2811
Engineers at the power station began the sequence. Second by second, the power blocks in and around Kampala shut down. Oddly shaped sections of the city went dark, one after another.
Street pods safely parked themselves, unlatched their doors, and powered down.
Two commercial flights to Entebbe Airport were already on the ground at airfields hundreds of kilometers away as their crews and napping passengers waited to continue.
Kampala’s Maritime Patrol Officers patiently listened as irate ships’ captains complained about the mandatory power-down.
All of Kampala’s Peace Officers and Traffic Conductors stopped private cars, trucks, and motorcycles at roadblocks throughout the area and demanded their engines be turned off.
01:01 Friday 2 September 2811
The 4 km diameter disk of the Trillium starship pulsed a strong microsecond-long radio code at Kampala from its location next to ZERO Station. Twenty-three point four hundredths of a second later, faint echoes of that pulse returned to the disk. Trillium’s receivers ignored that echo but went to maximum sensitivity for the following 200 microseconds and analyzed the faintest of faint radio energy emanating from Kampala and the nearby countryside.
Trillium’s equipment repeated this routine 3 times every second as thrusters slowly carried it around a 10 km circle in space. Meanwhile Trillium’s controller gathered petabytes of data per second and analyzed all of it in real time using sophisticated Fourier Transforms.
01:31 Friday 2 September 2811
Power returned to the space elevator car. Five seconds later, Captain Perry’s e-pad announced a call from Captain Erdman. “Captain Perry here, Bernard.”
“Pulse 44, temperature 37°, respiration 12. Ensign Ramirez is well and sleeping peacefully.”
“¿Bernard, did you get a fix on her location?”
“0.32690° North and 32.55834° East, give or take a couple of meters. We sent that information to Kampala authorities at the same time I called you.”
“Bernard – Captain Erdman, let me know the minute she’s safe.”
“Celeste, I must tell you how impressed we are here at ZERO with Trillium; that is one remarkable radio receiver and the data handling is unbelievable. You girls have one super toy to play with.”
“It had better be; it’s one of the few toys we get for the rest of our lives.”
“Celeste, compliment your brood on realizing that Trillium, as incomplete as she is, could trigger, read, and locate Estrella’s biomodulator. The calculations and the analytical techniques they sent us for conducting the process were right on.”
“Yeah,” said Celeste. “Amazing what these gals can do when they want to.”
01:38 Friday 2 September 2811
“¿Huh?” I woke to something loud. Grunts and thumps and crashing came from all sides. “¿What’s going on?” I shouted. “Don’t hurt each other.” Immediately a gaggle of voices replaced the thumping and bumping. Someone gently removed my blindfold. “Ow. The light hurts my eyes. ¿Who are you guys? ¿Peace Officers?”