Chapter three

Ho Cheng paced restlessly in front of the large picture windows of his office that looked out onto the landing field. Periodically he would stop to look down on the frenzy of activity in preparation for the shuttle's landing. He'd spent much of his time since arriving from Beijing one floor down in the command centre, itself a hive of activity, but now wanted some time alone to collect his thoughts. He'd even put his IR cornea into standby, the constant stream of communication with the multitude of well-wishers, officials and press having been delegated to his assistants.

This was it, the culmination of 27 years work. And that wasn't including the 20 years of effort prior to that in which he had amassed his fortune. He smiled at the thought of himself back at the start of it all, scurrying around his father's fishing boat, often carrying a bucket of some foul smelling bait or other. But the oceans were almost depleted, the family business almost ruined. Ho had seen another way, a way of harnessing a cross section of technological development for a better future. A theme that had run throughout his life, culminating today. Back at the start of it all he would spend nights haunched over the family computer, communicating with environmentalists, biochemists, geographers, economists; him, the small town fisherman, but with a thirst for knowledge. His family had scrimped and saved to support him through his studies at the prestigious University of Science and Technology of China.

The key was communication and diversification. Making the biologist understanding the businessman. The engineer talking to the economist. Too often fields of specialisation are inward looking. Harnessing the march of information technology Ho was able to bring all of these people together, to develop unique solutions to age old problems. By the time he was 30 years old, Ho was one of the richest men in China. By 40, one of the richest in the world. He'd never set out to make his fortune, he was too much of an idealist for that. But his rise intellectually had coincided with the rise of capitalism in China. Despite its faults, if there is one good thing that capitalism is capable of, it is richly rewarding those with the ideas and drive to make things happen.

What to do with the fortune had always presented Ho with much more of a problem than creating it in the first place. Politics was an option, an option many of those close to him had tried to push him towards. But it wasn't for him, it all seemed too, well, petty. The desire of the Chinese authorities to catch and surpass the Americans was all encompassing. This competition had driven the two close to hostile confrontation on more than one occasion; the second cold war was how the e-media had termed it. To Ho this was ridiculous. He couldn't understand how two nations that now had so much in common could be so fractious. Indeed, the American and Chinese societies had learnt much from each other. The march of capitalism in China was often interpreted as an effort to copy the Americans - a 'Chinese dream' much like the American version. But in return the reach, scope and power of the state in the US had increased to perhaps even surpass the authoritarianism that had shaped Chinese political development for centuries.

The Sino-American model of political and economic development was ascendant around the world. The Europeans perhaps with a slightly more relaxed version, but given that most were now heavily dependant on the two super powers for trade and financing they were certainly the minor partners of the world's power-brokers. Not all were happy with the situation of course, capitalism would always leave some disenfranchised, while others baulked at the limits to their personal freedoms brought about by the all encompassing state machinery. Ho had paused at one end of his office, looking out through the window there to the ragged group near the entrance to the complex.

Protesters

It amused him a little at the effort that these people must have had to make to travel unofficially to deep in the Gobi desert. In a day and age that society could quickly and easily voice its discontent via the ultranet (monitored by the state as they did so, mind) the fact that 20 or 30 had decided to come in person instead of grouping with 20 or 30 thousand online seemed silly. As if their voices would be heard more, surrounded by the company security drones and carefully recorded by the aerial reconnaissance bots flitting around above. Each to their own though, he figured. Most likely Regressionists, those harking back to an earlier time, some illusive point in history where it was all fun and games. Ho had never come across such a period in history class himself, if anything the here an now was as good as it got. Machines to do almost all of the manual labour, stringent environment legislation, average global life expectancy of over 70 (and 82 in China). But still many weren't happy. The Regressionists angry at the invasiveness of modern technology, the neo-communists believing that now was the time to rise up, the techno-anarchists pushing for an ultranet free of governance.

Ho sighed.

He had hoped that his Mars endeavour would bring people together. The fateful day of his 42nd birthday when he released onto the ultranet his statement of intention. His desire to form a global space agency, to employ the best and the brightest from around the planet, for mankind to work together to achieve what had been thought to be impossible.

To set foot on Mars

This would be his legacy and this would be where his fortune was spent. Many had laughed at him, others thought he was mentally ill. Two of his children had cut them selves off from him for what they viewed as a reckless frittering away of money that could be better spent elsewhere (including on them, no doubt). In America he had been written off as a hopeless dreamer by the government, once they had convinced themselves this wasn't part of some new weapons programme that was. Their own space programme had been abandoned decades ago given the lack of a compelling economic justification to maintain it. However, on this issue the American people were different to the American government. The Mars mission had caught their attention. One or two came forward to join Ho's new team, experts in their fields. As the years went by, the message got back to the government that not only was Ho serious, he was also capable of pulling this off. More began to take notice, more joined the team. Nine years into the programme and Ho formally opened the United Earth Space Agency. Located in Kampala, Uganda, it was diplomatically placed almost equidistant between Beijing and Washington DC, with easy access to Europe, Russia and Brazil.

Ho liked to flatter himself that the UESA went a long way to calming international frictions. It wasn't a magic pill - he could still remember some of the committee meetings almost coming to blows amid continued distrust - but everyone working to a common goal provided a united focus that the second cold war had lacked. Away from the political progress, the technological development was perhaps even more astounding. The military applications of the new tech was handled at the committee level, distributed to all so no one had an unfair advantage with it. What they did with the tech was up to them; an Indian company's inventive use of some of the propulsion technology catapulted their CEO into the big time, Ho now counted him as a close friend. The civilian technological applications, meanwhile, were largely kept within Ho's conglomerate - he was still a business man at the end of the day, and he was still funding the project. Despite the world's interest, no one was falling over themselves to contribute.

A knock at the door pulled Ho away from his contemplation, "Hello?"

Paul, one of his assistant's came through the ornate double doors into the office "Sir, your IR was on standby, your daughter was worried"

"How long till touchdown?"

"Three minutes, 34 seconds" Paul, like pretty much everyone in the building had the countdown timer running

"That soon?" Ho smiled, the reminiscences of an old man had obviously taken longer than he thought. A flick of his hand brought the IR out of standby

"Dad?" the communication from his daughter was instant, she must have been monitoring his IR presence on the ultranet, "Wei said you promised to be here when the shuttle lands"

"Yes dear, I'm coming" his grandson had insisted on coming out to the control centre for the landing, resolute that a feed wasn't good enough. Maybe his daughter was raising a young Regressionist. Ho chuckled as he walked over to join Paul at the door before heading downstairs to the command centre.

The buzz of activity in the command centre had intensified even further since Ho had retreated from it half an hour previously. Tactical displays were projected over large e-tables. Too much information for a single pair of IR glasses to convey, the e-tables were used by the department heads to co-ordinate their numerous sub-teams. Ranks of technicians sat on neat rows of chairs, hands a blur of activity as they performed their various duties via their IR glasses and corneas. They were all tapped in to a short range ultranet sub-stream, a more secure way of guarding against infiltration as well as allowing for even faster rates of data transfer.

Ho held Wei's hand as they surveyed the action from a small balcony at the rear of the room. His daughter was down on the floor looking at an e-table with her husband who was one of the department heads. Nerves were building in the pit of Ho's stomach once again, so he tried to distract himself by cycling through the camera streams. The ground crews were now largely in their designated positions around the landing zone. Most would be in the low lying building to the north where the emergency response team controlled their various drones from; Ho saw one of the larger fire-fighting machines cycle through the water cannon position as its controller checked for malfunctions.

Switching to another feed Ho looked out on the front of the building. The security and aerial drones were still there, but the crowd of protesters had largely disappeared. Ho presumed that they were making an early start on getting back to civilisation, non-fussed about joining in the celebrations. He still thought that they would have at least stayed around for touchdown, though.

Less than a minute to go and the control centre had quietened down again. Most was in the hands of the crew inside the shuttle now. Ho tried to imagine what Kathrin Kuester and her co-pilots would be feeling right now, so close to the end of their journey to Mars and back in control of a trillion yuan vehicle. Ho gripped Wei's hand a little tighter, pinging him a picture of the UESA flag which still stood in the Martian desert.

The lights went out, as did Ho's cornea display. He looked about uncertainly as the emergency lighting kicked in, a dull red illuminated the control room as the volume of activity was ratcheted back up. Beside him Paul was looking equally confused.

Wei pulled at his jacket sleeve "What's happening Grandaddy?"

"Probably just a power glitch" he replied, but found it hard to make himself sound convinced. There were three separate power supplies to the control centre in addition to the backup; a blackout was practically impossible.

His daughter was fighting her way across the floor of the control centre to get to them. Ho bent down in the balcony so as to be able to hear her as she started talking quickly up at him, "....lost contact....shuttle unresponsive....systems down" she didn't pause for breath. Ho straightened up to look out of the window - with no camera feeds or technical data coming through to the IR it was the only way of trying to understand what was happening.

The shuttle banked toward the control centre.