“Isn’t that a penal colony?” Doob asked. “Why would anyone—”
“It used to be a French prison, yes,” Luisa said. “Hasn’t been for a long time. Hardly anyone lives there. But it’s right under the flight path for launches out of Kourou. So, whenever there’s a launch, they evacuate it.”
“It must be evacuated all the time then, given the amount of traffic.”
“For the last two years, yes. But then a bunch of people showed up there and camped out and refused to move.”
“I’m guessing that the French and the Russians went right on launching.” In fact, Doob knew as much, since he saw arklets and supply ships coming up from Kourou all the time.
“Yes. So the occupation was more of a symbolic gesture at that point.”
“These squatters were Venezuelans, I take it.”
“Yes. It is a fairly easy cruise along the coast from Venezuela to French Guiana—a few hundred kilometers.”
Something was itching in Doob’s memory. “Does this have anything to do with the supply vessel that failed to show up yesterday?”
“And the day before. There’s been a two-day interruption, going on three, in launches out of Kourou.”
“A few squatters on Devil’s Island can’t explain that,” Doob said. Then he added, as a joke, “Unless they have surface-to-air missiles.”
Luisa said nothing.
“Are you shitting me?” Doob said.
“It’s not so much the ones on Devil’s Island as the ones in the blockade,” Luisa said. She handed her tablet to Doob. She’d pulled up what looked like an aerial photograph, probably shot out the window of a helicopter. In the foreground was the European Space Agency launch complex, which he’d seen before. It was separated from the Atlantic by a couple of kilometers of flat ground, banded with low, scrubby beach vegetation. In the distance was a trio of small islands, a few miles off the coast; he assumed that Devil’s Island was one of them.
The waters between the beach and the islands were choked with vessels: mostly small, but a few rusty freighters as well, a full-sized oil tanker that looked the worse for wear, and some ships that he could have sworn were military.
“When was this taken?” Doob asked.
“A few hours ago,” Luisa said.
“Are those naval vessels?”
“The Venezuelan navy is coming out to maintain order,” Luisa said.
“And you weren’t kidding about the surface-to-air missiles?”
“The pirates who showed up in that oil tanker claimed that they had Stingers, and that they would use them against the next rocket that lifted off from Kourou.”
“That is nuts,” Doob said.
“Politics,” Luisa said. “But we always knew it was going to happen, right?”
“Good morning, Doctors,” said a new voice: that of Ivy Xiao, entering the module to begin her own “morning” exercise routine.
“Good morning, Doctor,” said Luisa and Doob in unison, though for Doob it was afternoon.
“Did I hear the P-word?”
“Yes,” Luisa said. “We were just talking about you, honey.”
Doob was appalled. But Ivy laughed delightedly.
Ivy had been replaced, something like eight months ago, by Markus Leuker, the Swiss fighter pilot, mountain climber, and astronaut. Or, to put it more precisely, a new position had been created that made Ivy’s post redundant. Izzy was no longer just Izzy; it was the combination of the Cloud Ark fleet plus the vastly enlarged complex that Izzy had turned into. As such, a new leadership structure was required. The person at the top of that structure would shortly become the most powerful leader in human history, in the sense that 100 percent of all people alive would be under his or her authority. It was an altogether different job from being the first among the twelve equals who had been manning the International Space Station of two years ago.
Nevertheless, Ivy could have done it. Everyone who really knew her agreed on that much.