CLOUDBUSTING

by Noel K Hannan

“I still dream of Orgonon.”

Declan Marko steeples his fingers and watches Professor Zero hovering, inverted, in his office. The Professor’s lank grey hair waves in greasy strings around his face. Earth rises, green on blue, in the gap between his lotused legs.

“Run that by me one more time, Professor.”

Zero’s mouth moves to answer.

“In layman’s terms, if you please,” interrupts the President. “I am neither astronaut nor astrophysicist, as you well know.”

“Hmm. Orgone physics is rather difficult to explain in layman’s terms, Mister President, involving as it does an alternative form of mass-free energy.”

Marko rolls his eyes.

“Very well. I’m going to make it rain.”

Marko exhales a long, patient breath. “They send all-weather orbital fighters against us, Professor. Last week a wave broke through our swarm cordon and thirty people were killed in an arcology rupture. And you think you can stop them by making it rain?”

The Professor kicks out a leg and rights himself, like the hands of a clock revolving. His hair remains a grey, greasy cloud around his head, his eyes are dark and sleepless.

“Ah, but this is no ordinary rain, Mister President. It is a hard rain.”

“A rain hard enough to smash kevlar and stressed glass canopies?”

The Professor smiles. “Oh yes.”

“Orgone,” muses the President. “Tell me more, Professor. Slowly.”

William Reich pioneered research into orgone accumulation after WW2 and was hounded into poverty and crime and finally to his death in prison by the US government. His pseudo-science of mass-free energy began as a defence against what he saw as an attempted invasion of Earth by UFOs, and inadvertently produced a rudimentary form of weather control known as cloudbusting. Before leaving for Heaven, Professor Lazarus Zero visited the site of Reich’s home and research facility, Orgonon, ironically now a retirement home for disabled air force officers, and managed to acquire a library of papers and books belonging to Reich. Lazarus Zero’s mission on Earth was complete, and he gladly ascended to Heaven.

Jessica Dorff mailname:Crystal has been in Heaven for seven days. On the eighth day her new best friend, Afrika Marko mailname:Starchild, takes her to the levels of the space station where no one normally goes, to the forgotten corners where equipment is stored and junk lies rusting in the oxygen rich air. This is the domain of Lazarus Zero, Afrika’s friend and unofficial tutor in all things technical.

The levels are dark and unlit. Power is at an absolute premium in Heaven, no corridor, room or pod is lit or heated unless totally necessary. The air down here is thin and frigid. It feels like they are deep underground, but of course there is no under, over, up or down in Heaven. Afrika guides Jessica along corridors choked with computers spewing their multicoloured beribboned entrails, precious copper and plastics awaiting scavenging hands. Scavenging hands rimed in black silicon grease with too long nails and rough, electrically-burnt skin. Hands buried now in the belly of a fat steel egg while blue welding flashes illuminate the gloom. Afrika and Jessica watch from the shadows, secret worshippers before a bright spark-filled altar.

“Come in, young ladies, come in,” says Lazarus Zero, muffled beneath the thick glass of the welding helmet. “I will be with you in a second, please take a seat.”

They wrap themselves around the trapeze of bars jutting out from the walls of Zero’s workshop, hang inverted and watch him work. Jessica’s rebirth as an Angel was only eight days ago, but already she is getting used to using her feet as hands, her hands as feet, and relearning all the rules of movement and handling that she thought she had finished with as a toddler. Like most of Heaven’s young citizens, she is barefoot, the soles of her feet toughening on diamond plate surfaces.

Lazarus sets aside his welding torch and pulls back his mask. He grins widely, a mouth full of crooked tombstone teeth and two days of stubble on his jutting chin. His eyes twinkle grey-blue. At seventy-two he is Heaven’s oldest citizen, the original maintenance engineer who opted to stay with the station when it was sold off. He has been back to Earth, of course, to ransack Orgonon and gather materials for his Accumulator, but that was many, many years ago, when his body was strong. Now frail, he is as tied to Heaven as the space-born Afrika is. Gravity is their enemy.

“Afrika, beautiful Afrika,” he says, lunging forward and grabbing her bare shoulders. Afrika wears a leotard and her skin is goose-bumped. Lazarus runs his hands laviciously over her smooth ebony skin. Jessica is shocked.

“Lush and forbidden, like the continent that bears your name. If only I was forty years younger.”

“Fifty, more like,” says Afrika, slapping his hands away as they brush her tits. She glances back at Jessica.

“Don’t be scared by him. He’s just a horny old man.”

Lazarus’ eyes light up as he sees the boyish, crop-blonde Jessica behind his beloved Afrika.

“And who is your friend?”

“I feel sick,” says Jessica, drifting from her perch. She passes out and bumps her head into a steel column.

When she comes to, she is zipped vertically into Lazarus’ quilted sleeping bag, suspended from the wall bars like a larvae. Lazarus and Afrika peer in at her. For a horrible moment she thinks she has been kidnapped by a weird sex ring run by a wizened old man and a beautiful African girl.

“We keep the air thin in here,” Lazarus explains, tapping his welding torch, “in case of explosions.”

“Ah,” says Jessica, and unzips herself from the bag that smells of dry sweat and salty odours. The workshop is chill but she is glad to be out, even if Lazarus’ rheumy eyes are roving all over her.

“What are you building, Lazarus?” asks Afrika, circling the pod that dominates the centre of the room. It has an egg shaped steel body, a plexiglass dome and a protuberance that resembles a multi-barrelled gun or rocket launcher, on a swivelling mount. The contraption looks like the disembodied turret of a tank.

“Why, it is my Orgone Accumulator, of course. If I show you how it works will your friend show me the rest of her tattoo?” Lazarus’ eyes are all over Jessica’s small breasts and the angel tattoo partly concealed by her top.

Afrika laughs and winks at Jessica. “Yes, of course she will. Show us, Lazarus.”

When Lazarus plunges his head into the innards of his project, Jessica floats over to Afrika and whispers in her ear :

“No, I will not!”

“I will fill the tanks with a H20 solution,” Lazarus echoes from the bowels of the Orgone Accumulator. “Water, to you and me. The water will charge the Orgone Cannon with mass-free energy that I, suspended in a geostationary orbit above the hostile airfield, will fire into the clouds, creating a hailstone storm that will smash the enemy aircraft to bits.” He emerges from the machine, grease smeared on his face. “But I must be very quick. The aircraft are out of their bunkers for only a very short time before taking off on their mission, by which time it will be too late.” He glances at his watch like the White Rabbit. “I must hurry. A window approaches.” His eyes gleam. “Just time to take a look at a sweet angel....”

Afrika and Jessica beat a hasty, giggling retreat.

From the Dictated Technical Journal of Professor Lazarus Zero, Chief Technical Advisor to Heaven (God’s Sparky!)

Date : September 1st, 2047

Time : 1505 EST

Location : 11 degrees north, 23 degrees west, Cape Clinton, Baja California, on a mission from God.

Vehicle : X2000 (I read too much scifi) Orgone Accumulator, the good ship ‘La Zero’. Propulsion system - none. Cloaking systems - none. Defensive systems - none. Heaven codename - ‘Sitting Duck’.

Mission - to destroy hostile Terminator orbital fighters on the ground.

Intelligence - local agents report strike mission scheduled for 1600 EST. Estimated time of revealment - 1515 EST. Sixteen minute window either way before La Zero becomes unstable and orbit decays. Gabriel standing by to retrieve capsule and occupant as necessary.

Time : 1510 EST. Thermal imagers detect movement at Cape Clinton. Could be towing tractors readying to bring out Terminators. Investigation and analysis conclude they are large personnel transports - motor coaches. Assessment - Cape Clinton is receiving large numbers of visitors, possibly dignitaries, today. Hope they brought their umbrellas. Steel ones!

Time : 1515 EST. Sixteen minutes to go. No sign of Terminators. Orgone Accumulator activated, cockpit fills with steam, overpressurisation of the water tank suspected, note made for X2000 Mark 2 (optimistic). Operational window could shrink because of this.

Time : 1518 EST. I have suited up and depressurised the cockpit, sealing it off from the heated water tank. Why didn’t I think of that before? Thirteen minutes to go, but I only have twenty minutes of air in my suit. Heaven paged, Gabriel en route to Sitting Duck. Flight time - thirty minutes. I don’t even want to do the simple sum.....

Time : 1522 EST. One Terminator visible. Squadrons are made up of eight. Want at least five on the blacktop before I shoot, make it all worthwhile.

Time L 1522.30 EST. Irradiated by incoming enemy hunter-killer satellites. Too far away to worry about at present but they are usually hideously armed. Think I will be out of here, one way or another, before they become a real danger to me. But one eye on the threat.

Time : 1523 EST. Three Terminators visible.

Time : 1525 EST. Four Terminators visible. Six minutes left, Orgone tank at full charge.

Time : 1528 EST. Still only four. Communication received from Heaven - transmission intercepted reveals that US Secretary of State Karloff, long-time advocate of military action against Heaven, is present at Cape Clinton. Too good to miss!

Time : 1529 EST. Commenced firing.

Time : 1529.30 EST. Orgone malfunction. Attempt to reboot master system.

Time : 1530.30 EST. Reboot successful. Full discharge into cumulo nimbus stacked above Cape Clinton, altitude 700 - 1100 metres. Cylinder of silver iodide fired into cloud to aid rainfall production. Perfect conditions!

Time : 1532 EST. Window closed. La Zero unstable. Abandoning module, awaiting Gabriel pickup.

End of Technical Journal Transcription.

Lazarus comes back from the dead. He wakes in the cold hold of the shuttle Gabriel as the doors close above him like a coffin’s lid, sealing out the Earth. A crewman pumps fresh oxygen into his suit.

“Did it work?” he croaks, his throat dry and raspy.

“Work? You got them all, Professor. All eight were out by the time the rain fell. Smashed ‘em all to smithereens. Minimal civilian casualties too, the visitors were watching from a hardened shelter. But I hear Secretary Karloff got a broken leg. Seems he was about to smash a bottle of champagne on a Terminator’s nosecone, got himself smashed instead!”

Lazarus closes his eyes. “Then it was worth it. Worth the sacrifice of La Zero. She did well, she was a good ship.”

“Sacrifice?” The crewman is puzzled. He kneels over Lazarus Zero, pulls him upright, presses their helmet faceplates together. “Angels are expert scavengers, Professor, you should know that by now. Look.”

La Zero, a little scorched around the edges but largely intact, sits at the end of the bay, still gripped in the shuttle’s retrieval arm. Lazarus reaches over and runs his gloved hand down the little ship’s side, tears on his cheeks.

“Not bad for a homemade Orgone Accumulator,” he says, as they dead back to Heaven. “William would have been so proud.”

Outside, hunter-killer satellites scour the sky, looking for enemy, and finding only cold empty space.

FIN