Pillar to the Sky by William R. Forstchen Page A

government won’t start building it, we will, and then there will be a day when Congress catches on to the idea and NASA gets the funding it truly deserves. Then together we finish it.”
    He paused.
    “Actually it was obvious years ago, in spite of the touch of optimism when they did some testing on lift vehicles out at White Sands. You might not have noticed me then, but I was there to observe the testing. But I knew a space elevator seemed so far-fetched to too many, and that is when I became, shall we say, very interested. Early on, I learned to look into ideas that others thought impossible.”
    “Like cracking MIT’s computers to change grades?” Erich asked with a chuckle.
    “Only illegal thing I’ve ever done,” Franklin replied with a smile. “At least, so far.
    “And thus our conversation now as to the next step we can take together.”
    He said it so matter-of-factly, as if it was already an assumed reality, that Gary just sat there, silent and wide-eyed. Six hours ago he had been calculating how much he and Eva would get in pensions, and at least, thank God, Victoria was on a scholarship. But now this?
    “Sir, I do find this a bit unbelievable,” Eva interjected, always the pragmatist. “You are saying you want to build the Tower. How?”
    “Oh, the usual way,” Franklin replied. “Draw up the plans, get the money, hire somewhere around 20,000 workers, and start laying bricks.”
    “Bricks?” Victoria blurted. “We need nanotube carbon, by the thousands of miles.”
    He laughed his infectious laugh.
    “When I was a boy and the preacher first read the Tower of Babel story to us in Sunday school, I was actually rather ticked off. I told him it was lousy engineering, and after it collapsed, someone doing the investigation as to what went wrong got paid off to blame God.”
    He smiled at his own joke.
    “I got spanked by my father for being disrespectful to the preacher over that one. Though later I remember the preacher over at our house and overhearing him talking with my parents to encourage me to question and do something unheard-of in my world at that time: go to college.
    “When I was growing up, we didn’t have Erector sets or stuff like that for us to play around with, even in school. So as a child I used to act out Bible stories in our yard, building hanging gardens, pyramids, and, yup, a few towers out of mud and cast-off bits of bricks.”
    “You didn’t even have Legos in school at least?” Victoria asked innocently.
    Franklin smiled but didn’t say anything.
    “You grew up in the South, didn’t you, sir?” Gary asked.
    “From now on it’s ‘Franklin,’ though I prefer ‘Frank’ with my friends,” he replied. “And I hope ‘Gary’ is OK with you.”
    “Victoria,” Eva said, looking at her daughter, “Mr. Smith grew up when schools were segregated.”
    Victoria looked at him and blushed a bit.
    “I’m sorry, sir.”
    “Sorry I grew up in a segregated world?” he asked.
    “Well, I meant about how stupid my question was.”
    “There is never a stupid question, young lady, when it comes from a heart that wants to learn. As to my school, I didn’t know any different; you don’t when everyone is just like you and you don’t see how the other half lives. But I was blessed with teachers who loved us; a school librarian who urged me to study math; a preacher who encouraged me but also taught me that I was part of a far bigger world and had a responsibility to that world; a kindly old man, a refugee to America, who would fish through his bins of discarded electronic parts at his store, explain what they were, their function and how I could put them together into something useful … I actually built a television for my family when I was in tenth grade—first one we had.”
    He sighed as if looking off to a distant memory.
    “And now? Well, let’s just say I was blessed with loving parents, same as you, and a country where I could fulfill my dreams after all. So